[Zope] Installing Python Modules Under Zope On Windows

[tom at tompurl.com]

I have a hardware constraint where I have to run Zope on Windows.  This
has worked pretty well for me because Zope 2.7 used my "system" instance
of Python 2.3.x.  At least, that's my assumption since runzope.bat pointed
at the system instance of Python.

This setup was nice because it made it very easy to install Python modules
(like PIL).  When I ran the module installation executable, it would find
my system instance of Python in the registry and install the module
properly.

With Zope 2.8.1, the "default" setting seems to be using the embedded
Python interpreter that came with Zope.  This is a problem because the
embedded versions of Python do not appear in the registry, making it
impossible to install a lot of Python modules on Windows.

I thought that the following script
(http://effbot.org/zone/python-register.htm) would allow me to add
embedded versions of Python to my registry.  However, you can't add more
than one major version of a python release (2.2, 2.3, etc) to the
registry.  So if my system version of Python is the 2.3.x branch, and I
want to use an embedded 2.3.x version of Python with Zope, then I'm out of
luck if I want to install many Python modules with it.

I can still edit runzope.bat so that it points at the system instance of
Python, but I don't know if this is a best practice.

Has anyone had any luck installing Python modules in an embedded version
of Python on Windows?  Is there a better way to work around this than
referencing the system version of Python in the runzope.bat file?

Thanks in advance for any help!

Tom Purl