[reportlab-users] Installer needs a bit of help on 64 bit Windows Server

[Robin Becker]

On 09/09/2010 12:08, Paul Keating wrote:

> I ran into a snag installing ReportLab 2.4 on a Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64 edition, because the installer complained that it could not find Python in the registry.

>

> This happens because registry calls from 32-bit programs to HKLM\Software get redirected to HKLM\Software\Wow6432Node. (Extended explanation in KB article 896459.)

>

> I fixed this by manually copying the registry subtree HKLM\Software\Python to HKLM\Software\Wow6432Node\Python. (It would  probably have been enough to copy Python\PythonCore\2.6\InstallPath but I wasn't in a mood to play with it.)

>

> Since there's nothing in the install but pure Python, I quite see that there doesn't need to be a separate 64-bit installer. There is a flag on RegOpenKeyEx that allows a 32-bit app to open a 64-bit registry key: KEY_WOW64_64KEY (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa384129(VS.85).aspx). I don't know if distutils knows about it, though.

>

> Regards

> Paul Keating

.........

Paul,
I assume you're running everything python related as 32 bit, but that even so 
our win32 installer caused an error is that right?

I suppose the question is whether our installer can do anything about it. We are 
just using bdist_wininst to create the exe installers. Perhaps we would do 
better with an msi type installer ie using bdist_msi?

I'll try asking on the python list.
-- 
Robin Becker