comparing alternatives to py2exe

[Philip Semanchuk]

On Nov 3, 2009, at 10:58 AM, Jonathan Hartley wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Recently I put together this incomplete comparison chart in an attempt
> to choose between the different alternatives to py2exe:
>
> http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=tZ42hjaRunvkObFq0bKxVdg&output=html


Hi Jonathan,
I'm asking similar questions for the app suite that we're developing  
on my current project, so I thank you for doing my work for me. ;)

I was interested in py2exe because we'd like to provide a one  
download, one click install experience for our Windows users. I think  
a lot of people are interested in py2exe for the same reason. Well,  
one thing that I came across in my travels was the fact that distutils  
can create MSIs. Like py2exe, MSIs provide a one download, one click  
install experience under Windows and therefore might be a replacement  
for py2exe.

For me, the following command was sufficient to create an msi,  
although it only worked under Windows (not under Linux or OS X):
python setup.py bdist_msi

The resulting MSI worked just fine in my extensive testing (read: I  
tried it on one machine).

It seems, then, that creating an MSI is even within the reach of  
someone like me who spends very little time in Windows-land, so it  
might be worth a column on your chart alongside rpm/deb.

Thanks again for your work
Philip