[Distutils] Need help with bdist_wininst bugs

[Greg Ward]

Hi all --

there are a couple of small bugs in the bdist_wininst command that need
fixing.  Thomas Heller is busy with personal stuff, and I am a fumbling
babe in the woods when it comes to hacking on Windows C++ code.  So we
need help!  Anyone care to tackle one of these?  The bugs I know about
are:

  * two particular Python version numbers -- "1.5" and "1.6" are hard-
    coded into the C source file (misc/install.c) for the installer;
    this list should at least be expanded to include "2.0", and
    preferably a less yucky solution than hard-coding version numbers
    can be found

  * problems (can't remember the details) when including zero-byte
    files in the archive

Part of the solution to the latter is probably a warning in sdist.py
that squawks if you have any zero-byte files in your manifest -- it's
good practice to always include at least a comment or docstring in
__init__.py, and I can't think of any other reason to include empty
files.  It's known to cause problems on Windows, so should probably just 
be avoided.  Seem reasonable?

Thomas (or others), what are the other known problems with
bdist_wininst?

Thanks --

        Greg
-- 
Greg Ward - Linux geek                                  gward@python.net
http://starship.python.net/~gward/
Speak softly and carry a +6 two-handed sword.