[pygtk] installer for pygtk applications on windows

[John Pye]

Hi Brad,

On Fri, 10 Aug 2007 21:29:45 -0700, "Brad Schick" <schickb at gmail.com>
said:
> John Pye wrote:
> > Hi all
> >
> > I recently improved the Windows installer for our PyGTK-based GUI
> > application, ASCEND. I wrote some scripts using NSIS that perform the
> > job of detecting Python, PyGTK, GTK, PyCairo and PyGObject and
> > installing the missing bits as required. 
> >   
> Your installer worked well for me on a clean WinXP machine (inside
> vmware). I also tested it by manually removed PyGTK and rerunning your
> installer. It correctly found the missing component and reinstalled it.
> Nice job. I've tried one other all-in-one installer but it is out of
> date and puts the components in funny directories, so yours is better.

Thanks for that. I'm pleased to hear that it worked for you.

A serious problem with it that I cam across today was that when someone
already has the GTK+ runtime from gimp-win.sf.net installed (which
*doesn't* include libglade), then my installation fails. Normally I use
the gladewin32.sf.net installer, which does include libglade.

So what to do if your PyGTK application depends on libglade, as mine
does? Anyone who has GIMP installed on their machine before running my
installer will run into this problem.

I am pursuing possibly compiling the necessary DLL that could then be
hosted as a supplementary package to be installed in addition to the
gimp-win files. I have also contacted the gimp-win people to ask if they
might consider bundling a libglade DLL, which would also solve the
problem.

> 
> Of course your installer would have more general purpose use to the
> PyGTK community if you created a version without ASCEND. Since you've
> provided the source others could create it, but if you had the time I'm
> sure plenty of people would appreciate it. No offense meant to ASCEND ;)

I figured that what I was providing here was a way for people who have
already written a PyGTK application to make it available to Windows
users in a more convenient form. I wasn't trying to deliver a general
purpose PyGTK installer, as that still leaves *end users* with the same
problem of having to go through the job of downloading/installing more
than one thing in order to use Package X, whatever that is.

Cheers
JP
-- 
John Pye
Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering
University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.
john.pye AT student DOT unsw.edu.au