[Distutils] Prerelease: bdist_wininst

[Thomas Heller]

> > I found the compressed base64 encoded bytes of the exe-file
> > nice in bdist_wininst, but there will also be another solution.
> 
> I find it really weird, but if it works...
It's not really my own idea, /F uses something similar in his squeeze
utility, and also in PythonWorks.

The advantage is that there only is a single file.
> 
> How problematic would it be just to include a wininst_stub.exe right in
> the Distutils source (ie. under CVS control, installed alongside the
> code and system config file)?  If it's small enough to include encoded
> in Python source, then IMHO it's small enough to include as a separate
> file in the source tree.  You would then find the stub in the same way
> as the system config file is found:
>   os.path.dirname(sys.modules['distutils'])
I would certainly prefer to include the whole source into distutils,
but first: currently distutils cannot build exe-files (not even
on windows), secondly how would the exe been build under unix?
Third, can distutils _install_ exe-files?

> 
> BTW, what was your alternate plan for finding the exe stub?
Haven't thought too much about it.

> 
> Oh, let me know when/if you want me to check this code in: the patch of
> course is trivial, and I will read through bdist_wininst.py itself just
> for paranoia's sake.  But if you're happy enough with it to let it go in
> CVS and code snapshots, just say the word.
Well, it is certainly not nearly finished, but I would like to get some
more feedback from users before working on it.
So yes, please go on, check it in.
Maybe you want to fix the problem before Rene Liebscher found:
change
        header = struct.pack ("iiiiiiii",
into
        header = struct.pack ("<iiiiiiii",

Thomas

BTW: Have you looked at my swig patches?