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

[Paul Keating]

Robin

Everything Python-related on this box is 64 bit. Python is embedded in the application I support, and the users need the 64-bit client to solve memory problems, which means the Python interpreter is 64-bit, and so every embedded import statement has to name a library that runs under 64 bit. That's no problem with Python or the standard library, of course, but with extensions in DLLs it is. 32-bit .pyd files don't work. This has given me a few grey hairs, because some of the Windows packagers haven't got around to 64-bit support yet (PySvn, PIL to name two).

I think you could quite easily go on using bdist_wininst. The only issue is that its check for the presence of a Python installation is a bit out of date, because it only looks for a 32-bit Python and doesn't see a 64-bit Python.

I see you've already got in touch with the distutils maintainers about this. I've never looked inside distutils, and I have an idea there's quite a lot of black magic in there. So I wouldn't hazard a guess about how hard it is to fix.

If it does turn out to be something best left to the core team, as a temporary workaround, a program that copies HKLM\Software\Python\PythonCore\n.n\InstallPath to HKLM\Software\Wow6432Node\Python\PythonCore\n.n\InstallPath, to be run ahead of the install, would do the trick and shouldn't take very long to write. I might even write one myself for when this goes into production.


Regards


-----Original Message-----
From: reportlab-users-bounces at lists2.reportlab.com [mailto:reportlab-users-bounces at lists2.reportlab.com] On Behalf Of Robin Becker
Sent: 09 September 2010 13:31
To: reportlab-users
Subject: Re: [reportlab-users] Installer needs a bit of help on 64 bit Windows Server

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
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