[Zope3-dev] Changes to zope3 windows binary installer

[Tim Peters]

[Tim Peters]
>> ... I build the Zope3 Windows installer because nobody else will do it ...

[Chris Withers]
> If someone can give me instructions assuming I'm starting from
> I-am-stupid-and-also-have-no-c-compilers-but-do-have-windows state, I'd
> like to try and help :-)

See the page referenced before:

    http://dev.zope.org/Zope3/ZopeWindowsRelease

As it says, you do need an appropriate C compiler.

> Any chance of us using hte build bot to build binary releases?

I haven't used the buildbot code; don't know what it can and can't do;
best guess is that it would be easy until it got to the parts of
testing the Windows Service support that I do by staring at the
Windows Services and Event Log GUIs.  Testing that the service
auto-starts after a reboot might also be a puzzle.

> ...
> Hmmm, is this what I'm asking for above?

Yes.

> ...
> Could Mark Hammond be tickled ot help here?

Don't know; doubt it (he hasn't shown any interest in doing this yet).

> How does Python build its Windows installer? It seems nice enough :-)

For 2.4+, it's a slick MSI-based installer, implemented by about 300KB
of Python and C code in a Python checkout's Tools/msi/ directory.  I
believe only its author (Martin v. Löwis) understands it all.  He
presented a brief paper about it at PyCon in 2004:

    http://www.python.org/pycon/dc2004/papers/44/

The bad news is that Martin is an extremely capable PhD who worked on
this across months; i.e., this was a major undertaking.  The good news
is that large parts of it are probably easily reusable -- by Martin
;-)