problem with "setup.py bdist --formats=zip"

[Humpdydum]

I would like to create a "binary" distribution for Windows, but in zip
format, since the installer requires root access. I don't want to use sdist
because that includes all the C source and the source for generating
documentation etc.

When I try bdist_dumb, or "bdist --formats=zip", the zip has the files with
*absolute* paths, as found on *my* system. This doesn't seem to make sense,
since anyone with Python not installed in the same place as mine won't be
able to unzip the distribution. Section 6.1 of python 2.3 docs has only one
line of text saying something about "absolute" vs "relative" and "not
implemented yet", somewhat surprising.

So how do people do this? I guess I could create a MANIFEST_bin.in where I
remove all the source stuff I don't want and replace sys.argv[1] with
"sdist" if I find "bdist" there, but that doesn't seem very robust. Plus I
then don't get the benefit of "bdist"-related stuff like putting "win32" in
the zip file name, etc. Surely I'm not the only one who needs this?

Thanks,
Oliver