Cheap binary Windows eggs
=========================

Thanks to `Hanno Schlichting's howto`_, I've figured out how to create
Windows eggs of those packages that have C extensions. This approach
doesn't need Microsoft Visual Studio, nor does it require you to wade
through `a bunch of free Microsoft downloads`_ that don't really work
in the end anyway.

Here's what I did:

1. Installed the `standard Python 2.4 distribution`_ from the MSI
   package.

2. Installed the `MingW compiler`_ (into the standard location ``C:\MingW``)

3. Created ``C:\Documents and Settings\Philipp\pydistutils.cfg`` and
   put the following text in it::

     [build]
     compiler=mingw32

   This tells distutils to always use the MingW compiler whenever it
   has to compile something from C.

4. Went to the **Control Panel** -> **System** -> **Advanced** tab and
   clicked on the **Environment Variables** button. There I appended
   the following text to the the ``Path`` environment variable, adding
   the Python interpreter as well as MingW's programs to the search
   path::

     ;C:\Python24;C:\MingW\bin

   Then I added another environment variabled called ``HOME`` with the
   following value::

     C:\Documents and Settings\Philipp

   This points distutils at the ``pydistutils.cfg`` file that I
   created earlier (you can put the ``pydistutils.cfg`` file anywhere
   you want, you just need to make sure that the ``HOME`` environment
   variable points to the directory).

5. With that in place, I am able to take any tarball (e.g.
   ``zope.interface-3.4.0.tgz``), unzip it and create a Windows egg
   from it like so::

     python setup.py bdist_egg

What's more, with a setup like this, it is easily possible to install
Zope 3 completely from eggs (e.g. using zc.buildout_) even if there
are no pre-built Windows eggs on the Cheeseshop.  More specifically,
with this setup, zopeproject_ (which is really just a convenience tool
over zc.buildout_) works like a charm on Windows now.

.. _Hanno Schlichting's howto: http://svn.plone.org/svn/plone/ploneout/trunk/WINDOWS.txt
.. _a bunch of free Microsoft downloads: http://www.vrplumber.com/programming/mstoolkit
.. _standard Python 2.4 distribution: http://python.org/ftp/python/2.4.4/python-2.4.4.msi
.. _MingW compiler: http://downloads.sourceforge.net/mingw/MinGW-5.1.3.exe
.. _zc.buildout: http://cheeseshop.python.org/pypi/zc.buildout
.. _zopeproject: http://cheeseshop.python.org/pypi/zopeproject