[Zope-dev] Windows Installer for Zope 2.9+

[Sidnei da Silva]

On Tue, Dec 06, 2005 at 12:35:49PM -0500, Tim Peters wrote:
| [Sidnei da Silva]
| > Just noticed a checkin talking about the Windows Installer builder. I
| > hope to find some time soon to take a look at that, since we now
| > require Python 2.4 and Python 2.4 uses the 'Microsoft Installer'. I
| > recall talking with Mark about it and he said it would take some time
| > to fix the build process.
| 
| I just asked Andreas (off-list) what his Windows plans were for 2.9 --
| for various reasons I assumed someone else was already looking at
| this, but that assumption may be wrong (and given the lack of relevant
| checkins recently, almost certainly wrong <frown>).
| 
| WRT Python 2.4, I never found a sane way to just _extract_ files from
| an .msi installer, so that part of the build process is dead meat now.
|  In other "bundle everything" Windows installers at Zope Corp (such as
| for ZRS), I copy Python .pyd. .dll and .exe files from my own Python
| 2.4.2 installation instead.  These binary files are all the
| build-Zope-installer process really needs from the Python Windows
| installer; the rest (like .py and .h files) can be taken from a Python
| tarball.  You can avoid wrestling with .msi entirely this way.

Just came to the same conclusion a few minutes ago.

| Possible headache:  Python 2.4.2 requires msvcr71.dll, which is a
| Microsoft DLL (it's akin to msvcrt.dll for Visual Studio 6 -- it's the
| C runtime for VC 7.1), and one for which the redistribution conditions
| are unclear (at least to me).  You can't assume that all Windows boxes
| already have this DLL.

Indeed. From reading around, seems like the saner thing is to make it
a bold warning in the installer that the said dll is required instead
of shipping it.

| Another:  I have no idea how the new zpkg-based build process will
| work with a Zope2-style installer.  A Zope3-style installer is
| different in many ways (it's a "plain" distutils-based installer, and
| requires that the end user get and install Python & pywin32 first). 
| Plan on pain-time here.

That's something I can play with :)

-- 
Sidnei da Silva
Enfold Systems, LLC.
http://enfoldsystems.com