Batteries Included?

[Mike Meyer]

"Alex" <lidenalex at yahoo.se> writes:

> One of the first things I wanted to do when I start learning Python was
> to produce a simple standalone application that I could distribute to
> my users (windows users). Python's moto is "Batteries Included", but
> where are the batteries for making exe files and making an installer
> file? I had to download, install and use py2exe and Inno Setup in order
> to accomplish this. I might be wrong expecting that a language whose
> moto is "Batteries Included" would be able to produce exe files. Are
> there plans to do this in the future version of Python?

Did you try looking through the distutils docs? After you create a
setup.py file for you program, doing

         "python setup.py bdist --formats=wininst"

should do the trick.

Of course, I don't own a Windows box, so I can't check it, but when I
ask a setup file for help on formats, it tells me the wininst format
is a windows installer.

Personally, I think of building a platform-specific bundle for
distribution to end users as more along the lines of shipping than
batteries. Python comes with lots of tools to help you get your
application working - the batteries. Once it's working, you don't need
batteries: you need wrapping paper, and a box, and tape, and so on.

           <mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm at mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.