[Zope3-dev] Re: AW: relying on win32api in windows support ofzc.zope3recipes

[Sidnei da Silva]

On 8/17/07, Martijn Faassen <faassen at startifact.com> wrote:
> > If an egg is the only way to install dependencies, then I would say
> > that buildout needs more work. From what I understand it would be
> > extremely hard to eggify pywin32.
>
> It's not the only way, but it's definitely the preferred way. A
> click-through windows installer is definitely *not* the preferred way.

My guess is that you don't have much of a clue about how distutils
work, more below. :)

> Is there way to install pywin32 by grabbing some .dlls online and them
> in the right place? (wherever that would be, I guess we'd have a
> custom part). We can write a recipe that does that.

PyWin32 does use distutils, but it has a ton custom code. I haven't
tried to build an egg, but my guess is that it might work
out-of-the-box actually.

As for the result of distutils 'bdist_wininst' which is what PyWin32
and many other things out there that provide a installer for Windows
use, it is basically a ZIP file with a executable header, just like
those self-extracting files created by WinZip and similar apps. So you
can unzip the PyWin32 installer and copy the binary files and .py
files to the right locations, then it should Just Work (TM).

> Why is it extremely hard to eggify pywin32? I guess it doesn't use
> distutils? If it's such a useful if not essential requirement on
> windows, why doesn't it work with the python installation
> infrastructure?

The python installation infrastructure is still distutils, not eggs.

PyWin32 creates entries in the Start Menu for the documentation and
PythonWin for example. I don't think that would work with eggs. But in
the case of just getting the binaries in place, then an egg might
actually be feasible.

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