Re: [PyX-devel] Re: Bug in Windows installer

[Fernando P. <Fer...@co...>]

Joerg Lehmann wrote:

> Yes, that may be the reason. Still under Linux and other Unix-like
> systems, absolute paths are interpreted relative to the --root
> directory, and the same mechanism could actually be used under Windows,
> e.g., one could specify --root D:\ Anyway, choosing a default "root
> directory" is probably not possible, although C:\ would come very close.

Let me suggest that you guys have a look at IPython's installer 
(http://ipython.scipy.org).  I had to deal with many similar issues, and I 
also develop 'in the blind', since I did everything from a Linux box with only 
about one day of work on a borrowed windows laptop.  It's primitive under 
windows, but it works.  Feel free to grab any code from there you may want.

You will HAVE to read registry keys if you want to make something portable, 
since the various windows directories can be called different things under 
different windows versions.  I also used the win32 extensions from David 
Ascher so I could give windows users 'Start Menu' shortcuts for  ipython and 
the manuals, but if you give that up, you can run all the code with only the 
tools in the stdlib.

I hope this helps.

Cheers,

f

ps.  If at some point you have a chance, it might be nice to fix pyx's 
installer for unix, whose bdist_rpm target is broken.  It fails with:

running install_data
creating /usr/share/pyx
error: can't copy 'pyx/lfs/10pt.lfs': doesn't exist or not a regular file
error: Bad exit status from /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.27521 (%build)

These days I try to install all my python packages via yum so I can manage 
them more cleanly, and now the only two things left which fail are PyX and 
VTK.  It would be nice to bring that list down to just VTK (which is a 
monster, so I sort of gave up on it).  And thanks for such a great tool!