David Anthoff wrote:
>> I'll look into this, but it probably isn't going to work as part of
>> the installer. I have previously looked into being able to install arbitrary
>> side-by-side copies of Python, but that's near impossible as well.
>> Windows Installer doesn't really let you just copy files - it isn't
>> part of its intended functionality. It isn't too difficult to build custom
>> MSIs with certain parts of Python (such as the DLLs and the standard
>> library, but no docs, headers or EXEs) in a way that won't conflict with
>> other installs, but you're still using an MSI here which is not
>> necessarily ideal.
>
> Are administrative MSI installs an option, though? They don't register
> anything
> but just drop files, right? But see my comments below about a zip drop, which
> would be a much, much nicer option in my opinion.
Not to my knowledge. An administrative install puts the files in a shared
location and allows users to run much faster installs that will then refer to
that shared location rather than copying the files locally. As I said, MSI
doesn't support plain file drops (often called "xcopy install" - you use that
term later, but I'm not sure how well known it is).
>> We could release a ZIP file containing all the Python files.
>
> That would be absolutely FANTASTIC and would solve all problems around this
> topic. In theory we could handle this ourselves on our end, but this is for a
> small open source project and we are really hesitant to take on another
> software
> packaging job. Doing this right just for our product would be a fair amount of
> work, we would have to do this with every new Python release, we might mix
> things up etc., and really we are more interested in our piece of software
> than
> packaging Python ;) I think it would be a much nicer model if there was a zip
> to
> download from python.org.
Apart from the bit below, this would be identical to you installing Python once
on your own machine and zipping up the files yourself. For the (considerably)
less than 1% of Python users who want to do this, I don't think it's a big ask.
> There is another issue that keeps us from hosting our
> own files: we would have to figure out licensing issues, both related to
> python
> and to the msvcr*.dll and msvcp*.dll. I would feel much more comfortable if we
> didn't distribute python or other binaries, but just downloaded stuff from
> python.org as part of the setup process.
IANAL, but I've dealt with enough licensing issues in my day job that this
makes me even more concerned about making a ZIP file available. If you're
planning to do this, putting up a ZIP file could potentially expose Python (and
presumably the PSF indirectly) to the liability that you should be taking on as
a redistributor, if it's that important to your product. Without an actual
legal opinion, I'm now -1 on making a ZIP download available for this purpose.
>> The only reason I hesitate on this is that it could cause significant
>> confusion for someone who doesn't really understand the implications,
>> while people like yourself who have thought about this are also capable
>> of finding workarounds and don't really need the ZIP file apart from
>> convenience.
>
> I was not clear in my previous email. I have NOT found a way to work around
> this. I have tried various hacks, but none really works. I got pretty far, but
> none really worked in all cases in a robust way. So I would certainly welcome
> a
> downloadable zip file a great deal. Is there maybe a compromise for now to
> have
> such a zip on the server, but not advertise it widely, and maybe put an
> "experimental"/"beta" moniker into the filename?
I gave you a workaround. Install Python just for yourself and zip up the
install directory.
> I assume you would include the MS VC runtime files msvcr100.dll and
> msvcp100.dll
> in such a zip file?
Either that or redistribute them using the tools provided by Microsoft (there
are redistributable merge modules and executable installers available). The
advantage of the latter approach is that your users will automatically get the
latest versions and security fixes.
> Is there any chance this might even be done (as an experimental version) for
> Python 3.4?
You'd have to ask Martin, so probably not. But the workaround I gave you will
work for 3.4.
>> Making some of the fixes to
>> make python.exe more portable would relieve my concerns here.
>
> I see that. For our cases things seem to work, but I agree, it would be good
> if
> python.exe would try hard to work in a xcopy mode.
>
>>> The old MSI installer sort of had something like that with the MSI
>>> administrative install option. But it never really worked because
>>> the administrative install didn't drop the MSVC runtime dlls
>>> anywhere, as far as I could tell. At some point I hacked around that
>>> by modifying the MSI file in my setup program to also drop the MSVC
>>> runtime dlls, but
>>> that was VERY hack
