[PATCH RFC] setup.py: always build and install hg.exe on Windows

[Pierre-Yves David]

On 12/05/2015 04:17 PM, Gregory Szorc wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 5, 2015 at 12:57 PM, Adrian Buehlmann <adrian at cadifra.com
> <mailto:adrian at cadifra.com>> wrote:
>
>     On 2015-12-05 12:54, Yuya Nishihara wrote:
>     > On Fri, 04 Dec 2015 00:27:53 -0800, Gregory Szorc wrote:
>     >> # HG changeset patch
>     >> # User Gregory Szorc <gregory.szorc at gmail.com <mailto:gregory.szorc at gmail.com>>
>     >> # Date 1449217488 28800
>     >> #      Fri Dec 04 00:24:48 2015 -0800
>     >> # Node ID 6f7ae69f2a3a5686d56436d386974ec87769ddb2
>     >> # Parent  71aa5a26162d6e4a165b68f07b331e3e2eedc117
>     >> setup.py: always build and install hg.exe on Windows
>     >
>     > Can't we use setuptools?
>     >
>     >https://pythonhosted.org/setuptools/setuptools.html#eggsecutable-scripts
>     >
>
>
> While setuptools supports "eggsecutables," I'm pretty sure that modern
> Python packaging conventions frown on anything related to eggs and I'm
> guessing we shouldn't even consider using eggsecutables.

Please do not use eggs, ever.

> FWIW, I attempted to use setuptools earlier this year and ran into
> issues.
> https://selenic.com/pipermail/mercurial-devel/2015-February/066236.html
>
>     Perhaps.
>
>     But the exe which this (apparently?) creates looks like having nothing
>     to do with the one that Mercurial already can build from
>     mercurial/exewrapper.c, which embeds a few Mercurial-specific tricks
>     (e.g. [1]).
>
>     exewrapper.c produces a hg.exe which (I think) I specifically wanted to
>     be able to use for running Mercurial's testsuite on Windows. So it was
>     mostly a developer "tool".
>
>
> Another benefit of hg.exe is it isn't a batch file. mpm made references
> to issues with `hg` as a batch script at
> https://selenic.com/pipermail/mercurial-devel/2015-October/074430.html.
>
>     I think we also tried to make it compatible with the HackableMercurial
>     package [2], which - unfortunately - wasn't that successful regarding
>     usage, as there - apparently - were some misunderstandings on how that
>     works.
>
>     I'm not sure what's exactly wanted here. The Windows Mercurial .msi
>     installer-package which Steve is building produces yet another hg.exe,
>     which is tied to a specific library.zip, created (I think) using py2exe.
>
>
> Correct. This hg.exe from the MSI loads the self-contained
> Mercurial+Python distribution created by py2exe.
>
> The goal of this patch is to enable Windows users to `pip install
> Mercurial` and get a proper Mercurial package. It will also enable us to
> produce wheels for Windows, which we can upload to PyPI so Windows users
> don't need a compiler to install Mercurial via pip. Mozilla cares about
> wheel distribution because it is much easier for us to manage Python
> packages on our Windows automation via pip than with MSI installers.
>
>
>     Perhaps Steve may have some remarks. He used to be (and most likely
>     still is) an expert on that.
>
>     Gregory's patch looks harmless and useful to me, but I haven't tried it
>     myself.

Adrian, can you try it? I'll queue it if you report success.

-- 
Pierre-Yves David