Windows porting questions

[Peter Hansen]

David McNab wrote:
> 
> On Sat, 15 Feb 2003 17:51:18 -0500, Peter Hansen wrote:
> >David McNab 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 Actually, I'd say that's an out-of-date sentiment, or at least one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 ...

Sorry, I definitely misunderstood then.  I think you threw me
off when you said "install and work straight out of a single EXE".
                           ^^^^^^^^

Anyway, if all you want is an installer, just use one.  Any
decent Windows installer will do what you want, and there's nothing
in Python that requires lots of registry entries and system DLLs
to be changed.  I don't bother with installers internally at work,
but we do have various py2exe'd programs, even which use different
versions of Python, running nicely from their own directories on
machines with no changes made to c:\windows or elsewhere.

-Peter