Windows distribution suggestions?

["Martin v. Löwis"]

Paul Rubin wrote:
> My app contains three different programs (say alice.py, bob.py, and
> carol.py) that need to be independently launchable, and a dozen or so
> other .py files that get imported into those first three.  What I'd
> really really like is to make a single installer called (say)
> "app.exe".  Launching app.exe should completely install Python, unpack
> all the necessary modules, and make three icons (alice, bob, carol) on
> the desktop.

It's not clear to me whether you really want to install a full version
of Python on the target machine; py2exe and Co. incorporate the minimum
subset of Python and ship this each time you make a distribution. So
Python is not installed on the target machine on its own.

In principle, it is possible to create an installer that first installs
Python (with entries in the start menu and all), and then installs your
own application.

If this is what you want, I would personally go with .msi instead of
using .exe. It can do "nested installs", where you can launch
the standard python-2.4.msi from your own MSI file. It also supports
"patch updates", where you replace the files that have changed on
the target machine, through a patch MSI.

The tricky part is to find a good authoring tool for .msi. I would
personally use my own Python library, but that requires to dig
into the MSI details.

Regards,
Martin