[Python-Dev] Remove "current" Windows executables from Lib/distutils/command in svn?

Sun Apr 6 08:15:32 CEST 2008

> I'd like to propose we delete Lib/Distutils/command/wininst-9.0.exe, and
> enable the building of that project by default in the standard build process
> (and I'll setup the x64 build of the executable similarly).

There are two issues here:
a) how does the binary get into the release tarball? You might argue
 that it doesn't have to, as it is sufficient when it is included in
 the Windows installer, however, as currently implemented,
 bdist_wininst also runs on Unix, and people use it that way.
b) IIRC, upx was used to compress these executables. I don't think the
 the current build process covers this, yet (but then, the current
 binaries might not be compressed with upx anymore, either - not
 sure whether that would be a bug). Of course, upx would probably
 not currently apply to Win64-amd64.
As another alternative to providing a separate AMD64 binary, you could
also try to make the existing binary work properly on Win64, and tell
it with a config flag whether to look for Win32 or Win64 (or either)
on the target system.
Regards,
Martin