[Python-Dev] [python-committers] [RELEASED] Python 3.5.0a4 is now available

[Steve Dower]

Paul Moore wrote:
> On 20 April 2015 at 09:16, Larry Hastings <larry at hastings.org> wrote:
>> There is now a third type of Windows installer for Python 3.5.  In addition
>> to the conventional installer and the web-based installer, Python 3.5 now
>> has an embeddable installer designed to be run as part of a larger
>> application's installer for apps using or extending Python.
> 
> Probably a question for Steve mostly, but how does this work, exactly?
> I see it's an exe - I was sort of expecting a zip file.

I made it a self-extracting RAR file so it could be signed, but I've already had multiple people query it so the next release will probably just be a plain ZIP file. I just need to figure out some reliable way of validating the download other than GPG, since I'd like installers to be able to do the download transparently and ideally without hard-coding hash values. I might add a CSV of SHA hashes to the zip too.

> Specifically, I was considering using this to make a build of Vim,
> with Python support, using a copy of Python included with Vim (so no
> reliance on there being a "system" install of Python). As Vim is open
> source, "build it yourself", I typically just compile vim and then zip
> up the application directory. So I'm not clear how an exe "embeddable"
> installer fits into that scheme. Apologies if the exe is just a
> self-extracting archive, and the answer is just "run it and tell it
> where to dump the files". I've not even had a chance to get to
> somewhere I can download the installer to try it yet :-)

It is indeed just a run-and-dump extractor. I haven't had a chance to write up any docs for it yet, but there are some open bugs I want to fix first (specifically http://bugs.python.org/issue23955) before this becomes too formalized.

Cheers,
Steve

> Paul