One other aspect is that MSI format is essentially opaque (correct me if I'm wrong here).
You are wrong: msiexec /a unpacks an MSI extracts the files from the MSI (documented as "administrative installation", meaning that the result of it can again be installed, as it will also produce a stripped MSI file with just the installation procedure).
With bdist_msi, if I want to get the compiled binaries out for some reason (maybe to install them in a virtual environment or some type of other custom build) I just unzip the file - the exe header gets ignored. With bdist_msi, I have no idea if there's any way of doing that.
It's little known, but was always well supported. See also http://www.python.org/download/releases/2.4/msi/
Also, there are fewer people with expertise in MSI format.
That's certainly true.
I suspect that even a Unix developer could have a go at modifying the C code in bdist_msi, it's not too MS-specific.
s/bdist_msi/bdist_wininst/
I don't know if that's possible for bdist_msi.
No need to modify C code - it's all pure Python :-) However, I agree that's beside the point: you do need to understand MSI fairly well for modifying bdist_msi. I'm skeptical with your assertion that a Unix developer could contribute to bdist_wininst though without a Windows installation - you have to test this stuff or else it will break.
Speaking personally, the msilib documentation is pretty unreadable, as I don't know anything about the MSI format. Whenever I've tried reading the MS documentation in the past, I've found it pretty impenetrable (a link to a simple tutorial, and some examples of use, in the msilib documentation might help).
If somebody would volunteer to write a tutorial, I could provide input. I'm clearly unqualified to write such a document, both for language barrier reasons, and because I continue to fail guessing what precisely it is that people don't understand. Regards, Martin _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com