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(python2.1-dist.info)Creating Windows installers

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Creating Windows installers
===========================

Executable Windows installers are the natural format for binary
distributions on Windows. They display a nice GUI interface, display
some information of the module distribution to be installed, taken from
the meta-dada in the setup script, let the user select a few (currently
maybe too few) options, and start or cancel the installation.

Since the meta-data is taken from the setup script, creating Windows
installers is usually as easy as running:

     python setup.py bdist_wininst

or the `bdist' command with the `--format' option:

     python setup.py bdist --formats=wininst

If you have a pure module distribution (only containing pure Python
modules and packages), the resulting installer will be version
independent and have a name like `Foo-1.0.win32.exe'.  These installers
can even be created on UNIX or MacOS platforms.

If you have a non-pure distribution, the extensions can only be created
on a Windows platform, and will be Python version dependend.  The
installer filename will reflect this and now has the form
`Foo-1.0.win32-py2.0.exe'. You have to create a separate installer for
every Python version you want to support.

The installer will try to compile pure modules into bytecode after
installation on the target system in normal and optimizing mode.  If
you don't want this to happen for some reason, you can run the
bdist_wininst command with the `--no-target-compile' and/or the
`--no-target-optimize' option.