Windows porting questions

[David McNab]

On Sat, 15 Feb 2003 17:51:18 -0500, Peter Hansen wrote:

>> I'm critically aware that the average Windows user expects everything to
>> install and work straight out of a single EXE file - this is what they're
>> used to. 
> 
> Actually, I'd say that's an out-of-date sentiment, or at least one
> which has meaning only for tiny utilities or something.  Most 
> Windows software has an "installer" which might itself be a single
> executable (though the stuff distributed on a CD almost never is)
> but which unpacks many many files onto the user's machine, changes
> the registry, etc.

I think you misunderstood me. I didn't mean that I wanted the software to
*run* from a single EXE (which harks back to DOS). What I meant was the
ability to pack everything into a single SETUP.EXE that installs
everything needed into C:\Program Files\ProgramName, without having to
negotiate a mine-field of modified system DLLs, substitute different
versions of DLLs, reboot the system n times, patch the registry all over
the place, hack numerous INI files, and all the other complicated stuff
that gives Windows a bad name as a development platform.

I know how to build Windows installers (thanks mainly to Nullsoft's NSIS
installer gen), so what I'm looking for is the ability to create a bunch
of files, to reside together in a single directory, which are all that's
needed for a program to run.

Anyway, thanks to all for advice - I happen to like the FLTK graphics
toolkit, because it's so darn simple to drive and doesn't lay a mass of
programming 'red tape' on the developer. So I'll have a crack at using
py2EXE on the FLTK demo progs.

Cheers
David

pyFLTK/FLTK