[Python-Dev] wininst-*.exe files in Lib/distutils/command (original) (raw)

Petr Viktorin encukou at gmail.com
Mon Oct 22 07:41:50 EDT 2018

On 10/18/18 7:44 PM, VanL wrote:

Primarily for non-windows platforms, but I also think for Windows users without any compilers or similar tools installed. There is also some discussion of removing some of the older toolchain-specific versions (leaving only -14), but that is a subject for another day.

Also I am not sure that bug report applies to 3.5/3.6/3.7.

It does.

On Thu, Oct 18, 2018 at 11:26 AM Petr Viktorin <encukou at gmail.com_ _<mailto:encukou at gmail.com>> wrote:

On 10/18/18 4:40 PM, Zachary Ware wrote: > On Thu, Oct 18, 2018 at 9:09 AM VanL <van.lindberg at gmail.com_ _<mailto:van.lindberg at gmail.com>> wrote: >> Hi all, >> >> I am looking into an issue associated with the wininst-*.exe files in the distutils/command subdirectory. It looks like these are the executable stubs used to create self-extracting zips for installation - but I am not 100% sure. It also looks like they include the calls to standard Windows functions to display the installer window. >> >> I have a couple questions I need help with: >> 1) Am I correct about the function, and if not, what are they? > > You are correct.  IIUC, they are checked in to allow creating those > installers from non-Windows platforms. Is that the only reason for them? At least on Linux, bdistwininst does not work since at least Python 3.2, as it tries to use a Windows-only encoding internally. https://bugs.python.org/issue10945 If they're only there for non-Windows platforms, they're useless. >> 2) Where did these come from, and where is their source code? > > Source can be found here: > https://github.com/python/cpython/tree/master/PC/bdistwininst > > The individual checked-in .exe files were each originally built by > whoever updated the Windows toolchain to a new version of MSVC > (Christian Heimes, Brian Curtin, or Steve Dower; though the oldest > ones were added by Thomas Heller, presumably using whatever the > current toolchain(s) was (were) at the time).  A few of them have been > rebuilt after bug fixes in the source since they were added, mostly by > the same people, though I also see Mark Hammond and Raymond Hettinger > in the history (and Georg Brandl via svnmerge).  I notice that there > are a few very minor code cleanups (the three latest commits here > https://github.com/python/cpython/commits/master/PC/bdistwininst/install.c) > that have not made it into a rebuilt exe yet. > > FTR, we really ought to remove all but the 14.0 version from the > master branch.  We don't support building Python with any toolchain > older than 14.0 anymore, and the older toolchains are nigh impossible > to find anymore anyway.

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