Can I build a single file containing all the contents of LIB?

[Gordon McMillan]

Warren Postma wrote: 

>I have an embedded system which has no support for long filenames. It's
>also a pain to upload the whole LIB subdirectory to this system.  The
>embedded system has a FAT filesystem and only supports 8 character
>filenames with a 3 character extension. 

There make8x3.py in the PC directory for long file name problems. You also 
need the environment variable LFN set to N (does that still work?).

>The first problem then is with
>the "exceptions.py" and from there on.    

You'll have to freeze that in, or have the 8x3 version sitting on your 
PYTHONPATH. It's imported from C during Py_Initialize(), so you've got no 
chance of interfering otherwise.

>Since my system recompiles for
>both native NT/Win32 and embedded mode, what I would ideally like to do
>is have a python script "bundle up" the standard Python library into a
>file, and then just upload that bundle. Then I would like it if python
>would search the \LIB directory FIRST for xxx.py and if not found, then
>search in the compressed (or not) file for it.   I would like the file
>to be separate from the executable, not linked in, so I can change the
>python library without recompiling the executable.

Start my Jim Ahlstrom's zipfile, or the .pyz stuff I do in my Installer 
(both of which rely on Greg Stein's imputils). But you'll have to do some 
hacking.

- Gordon