can distutils windows installer invoke another distutils windows installer

[timw.google]

Hi all.

I have a package that uses other packages. I created a setup.py to use
'try:' and import to check if some required packages are installed. I
have the tarballs and corresponding windows installers in my sdist
distribution, so if I untar my source distribution and do 'python
setup.py install', the script either untars the subpackages to a tmp
directory and does an os.system('python setup.py install') (Linux), or
os.system(<bdist_wininst installer>) (win32) for the missing
subpackage.

This seems to work fine, except that on Windows, I can't uninstall the
main package with Windows 'Add or Remove Programs' from the control
panel. If I install my main package with a bdist_winst installer, I
can.

Is there a way to set up a bdist_wininst installer to do what I can do
with the source dist?

Thanks in advance,

 

[Serge Orlov]

Hi all.

I have a package that uses other packages. I created a setup.py to use
'try:' and import to check if some required packages are installed. I
have the tarballs and corresponding windows installers in my sdist
distribution, so if I untar my source distribution and do 'python
setup.py install', the script either untars the subpackages to a tmp
directory and does an os.system('python setup.py install') (Linux), or
os.system(<bdist_wininst installer>) (win32) for the missing
subpackage.

I believe there are two ways to handle dependances: either you bundle
your dependances with your package (they just live in a directory
inside your package, you don't install them) or you leave resolution of
dependances to the application that uses your package. Handling
dependances like you do it (package installs other packages) doesn't
seem like a good idea to me.