Is there a small Python runtime environment installer?

[David Bolen]

tex_r at hotmail.com (Tex Riddell) writes:

> More specifically I'm looking for something for the windows
> environment, but one should be able to make something like this
> multi-platform, right?

Well, you'd have a harder time having a portable distribution if you
were looking for a binary, sort of by definition.

But since you're specifically targetted at Windows, why not just use
the standard Windows installer?  It lets you ignore the examples and
documentation and just install the core stuff if you like.  Any
Windows user should be completely at home with the installation
process.

> How can we expect python to become more mainstream if only developers
> can understand the environment that must be set up for scripts to run?

At least under Windows, I don't think installing Python is any harder
than installing any other application.  That's largely true as well on
various Unix platforms, since there are rpms and other install
packages written for Python to conform to local platform expectations.

> I really don't have time to learn distutils (re-inventing the wheel
> that I'm sure so many have done) in order to install a runtime
> environment on someone's machine so they can run a simple 8k script.

Of course, those same people (under Windows) have already installed
MBs of common code just so they can run small VB applications, whether
via their initial Windows installation or updated silently in other
stuff they may have installed. :-)


BTW, there is also the option of constructing a standalone
installation (for Windows, look into the py2exe or installer packages,
and installer also handles Linux) for your script.  For Windows, it
would include the Python DLL and appropriate lib files all packages
into a single file or collection of files that you could then
distribute independently of any other.  On the Windows platform if you
combine that with an installer - like the free Inno Setup - you'd end
up handing your script to your friend as a normal Windows installation
program that took care of installing everything.

Of course, this would be much larger than an 8K script and would thus
be hellishly less efficient if you were sending a lot of scripts this
way (as opposed to just having him install the runtime one time), but
for a one-shot deal it would make the receiver's life simple.

--
-- David
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