Installing programs that depend on, or are, python extensions.

[James A. Donald]

On Apr 30, 6:39 pm, David Cournapeau <courn... at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 30, 2011 at 2:19 PM, James A. Donald <jamesdnld... at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I have noticed that installingpythonprograms tends to be hell,
> > particularly underwindows, and installingpythonprograms that rely
> > on, or in large part are,pythonextensionswritten in C++ tends to be
> > hell on wheels with large spiky knobs and scythes on the wheels.
>
> > Is this because suchinstallare inherently hard to do and hard to
> > write, or is it becauseInstalltends to be done last, and therefore
> > not done at all?
>
> Most likely both.
>
> Packaging complex application is hard, and I think few programmers
> like doing it, so it is rarely done correctly.
>
>
>
> > Can anyone suggest any examples of such a program with a cleanwindows
> >installthat shows how it was done?
>
> > Bywindowsinstall, I mean you run setup.exe, and get a program group,
> > file types registered, and an entry in the add/remove programs list, I
> > do not mean fourteen pages of direly incomplete notes which do not
> > actually work for versions later than 1.01, and do not work for
> > version 1.01 unless one has already installed the complete developer
> > environment.
>
> Well,pythonitself is a reasonably good example I think. But if you
> are interested in having onepythonprogram which is a one clickinstallwithout requiring the user to eveninstallpython, you will
> need to look into tools like py2exe which can create all the files
> necessary to do so from an existingpythonpackage. Then, you package
> those files into a nice installer. I like nsis, which is open source
> and relatively well documented, but there are other solutions as well.
>
> cheers,
>
> David

py2exe would work, but a correct installer would install Python if not
present, then install the program.