Executable program is possible?

[David Bolen]

"Sébastien SAUVAGE" <nospam at sebsauvage.net> writes:

> "Thomas Heller" <thomas.heller at ion-tof.com> wrote in
> news:a2hi92$1174p3$1 at ID-59885.news.dfncis.de: 
> 
> >> Is there some kind of auto-installer included with py2exe, that can
> >> unwrap everything and do the necessary installs?  If not, adding one
> >> would be a big win. 
> > 
> > No, not currently. You can however easily build one with
> > the free Innosetup.
> 
> 
> No need.
> 
> McMillant Python Installer wraps the whole thing into a single .EXE
> It's free and it works :-)
> 
> And there's not 'installation' required to run the program : the EXE can be 
> run directly.
> 
> http://www.mcmillan-inc.com/install1.html

True, but when run directly, the EXE will unpack all of the associated
binary files (PYDs, DLLs, etc..) into the directory where it exists.
In earlier versions of the Installer it was also possible for some
abnormal terminations of the application to prevent cleaning up those
files before exit.  I'm not sure if that's true with v5 or not, since
I haven't used this format recently.  Not necessarily a big deal but
it may not be precisely what your target user may expect.

So it's definitely a possibility, but if you want something that works
like a standard Windows installer (both install and uninstall), I've
found the best combination to be the Installer output (or py2exe) as a
distribution (e.g., without the PYDs/DLLs stuck into the exe), and
then an InnoSetup installation.  InnoSetup is also free and works, and
the combination of that and Installer/py2exe makes a Python
application look just as normal as any other Windows installation.
There are some other free Windows installation tools too, but I've
been very pleased with InnoSetup myself.

--
-- David
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