[Distutils] More Windows questions

[Paul Moore]

On 10/4/06, Phillip J. Eby <pje at telecommunity.com> wrote:
> Okay, I've looked at the registry a bit, and it seems like I can register
> App Paths either under HKLM (for the whole machine) or under HKCU (for the
> current user).  However, both seem to have issues.
[...]
> 2. Register HKCU "App Paths" entries for all console scripts, pointing to a
> second '-conio-.exe' wrapper for the same '-script.py', thus allowing
> console scripts to be run from the "Start/Run" command line.

As I said in a previous email, keep away from App Paths, and in
particular, don't register an executable under any name but its own.

There's very little documentation that I could find on what App Paths
should do, so all you've got to go on is experiment and looking at
what others do. No-one that I have seen ever registers an exe under a
different name. And some programs (4NT, for example) expect the App
Path name to match the exe name (and give a broken user experience if
that isn't true). Essentially, you're well into "undocumented
behaviour" territory there, and things *will* go wrong.

Frankly, anyone using Start/Run *knows* that command line programs
don't leave their window open. They know to start cmd, and type the
command into that (even if they don't do anything else in cmd). Their
expectations are right, don't break them by trying to be too clever.

Paul.