When I was working on PythonCE years ago I had the same concerns.
I am wondering if Python eggs, easyinstall and setuptools could be put to use for this. Rather than starting from scratch.
I think easyinstall at least gets you the dependency checking, downloading (non-graphical) and installation. removal is a pain.
Brad, this sound likes a good idea but using these tools would require to port distutils to PythonCE first. I gave it a try ~ a year ago and while it does not raise particular error it was not working. I strongly suspected it has to do with wince lack of current directory but was unable to spot the problem exactly. Does someone on this list have been able to make distutils works on ce ?
Another option would be to extract or reimplement code for installation/uninstall of eggs without distutils dependency. So we can still create eggs on desktop with traditional methods and install them with PythonCE.
While I won't be able to make a so flexible as distutils/setuptools/easy install, I found reimplementing something more specific to PythonCE could be really interesting for the purpose of learning.
I gonna brainstorm a bit more before making a decision that would be hard to revert back.
Anyway, I take this occasion to thank you and others for making pyhton possible on wince :)
Regards, Alexandre _______________________________________________ PythonCE mailing list PythonCE@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pythonce