Binary generation with distutils? (Freeze, py2exe, etc.)

[Jeff Shannon]

"Martin v. Löwis" wrote:

> "Thomas Heller" <theller at python.net> writes:
>
> > Problems with freeze, IMO, are that it requires a C-compiler,
> > which most people on windows do not have...
>
> In the context of distutils, absence of a compiler may not be a
> problem: people building packages with distutils will need a compiler,
> atleast if the package contains extension modules.

Yes, but it is entirely possible that someone may be building a pure
Python application, and wish to distribute that as a single file.  It
would be desirable (though probably not essential) to require a C compiler
only in those cases where custom C extension modules are used.

For instance, I'm working on an application that uses wxPython and
win32all, but all of my own code is pure Python.  It's an internal
utility, so ease-of-packaging isn't a big priority (it's not too big of a
deal for me to install ActivePython + wxPython + my own bdist_wininst
package on each of the half-dozen machines that will need it), but I can
easily imagine a case in which it would be preferable to have a
single-file installer that would manage all of this automatically.

Jeff Shannon
Technician/Programmer
Credit International