bootstrapping on machines without Python

[mmanns at gmx.net]

On Fri, 13 Nov 2009 02:40:28 -0800 (PST)
Jonathan Hartley <tartley at tartley.com> wrote:

> Even my very limited understanding of the issues is enough to see that
> the idea is far from trivial.

[...]

> In the long run, to be useful for real projects, the bootstrapper
> would need to manage some nasty details:
> * different versions of the interpreter for different applications
> * download required packages
> * manage conflicting versions of packages

An easy approach could be to use the portable apps version of Python.
(I assume that you use Windows.)

After installing portable Python on your computer, your application
and any additional libraries are put into the site-packages / Scripts
folders. Next, the install folder is zipped and provided for download. 

A batch script, which is downloaded and run by the user, downloads the
zip file and extracts it. The script executes python.exe with your
Python script as command line argument.

In this scenario, the user would not need Administrator privileges. 
You could also get around compatibility problems by providing
preferred versions of additional libraries in the site-packages folder
of portable Python.

However, the download size would probably exceed 100 MB. I also do not
know if there are licensing issues using portable Python like this.

Martin