Building Windows Installers

iexpress.exe is included in most versions of Windows. It packages up files into a self extracting exe and executes a command of your choice after extraction.

The approach PyWin uses is to include all the necessary batch files and libraries and to execute "installer.bat" after running the install exe. Text file copies of markdown (*.txt) are included for display during the running of the install exe and so that Windows users can easily open and read licenses and the like.

On modern Windows systems (Vista+), it is necessary to indicate how to launch batch files. By default, iexpress tries to launch batch files with Command.com, which is for older versions of Windows. To actually launch batch files in Vista+, you have to launch "cmd /c install.bat" instead of just "install.bat".

installer.SED is the configuration for iexpress.exe, to allow for rapid creation of new installer exes. Newly added files will have to be manually added and the installer.SED updated. The installer.SED included with PyWin assumes that the pywin clone directory is C:\github\pywin. Attempting to create an exe with the included installer.SED from a different location will result in an error.