[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > I am undertaking writing an installer for a software package using > Python. It is exclusively for Linux. Because this is an installer and > has to run on numerous Linux distros, it is presenting some unique > challenges.
I had the same problem to solve as you, and I hope, my answer is not too offtopic to you, since I wrote the solution in Tcl/Tk. I needed the installer to work in text-mode, if no X is available and with a GUI, if X can be used. The Installer works in both modes. It is not very fancy, but allows to run additional scripts after installation, shows some info and License-Agreement, Logo and so on. The "trick" was to pack all in a single script, that first runs as a shell script, checks if Tcl is available at all (for you python), the starting up Tcl, feeding it the same file as a Tcl-Script, then checking inside of Tcl, if Tk can be loaded (for you TkInter, which is the same thing) and if so, run the GUI, otherwise run in a text-mode, which I implemented using only basic shell-commands (cat, md5sum for validity-check, bzip2, but gzip would also work, and sed, the other commands are bash-builtins) so they should be on every distro. But that part possibly can better also be implemented in python or Tcl. - If you are interested, how it works and think, it would help you, tell me. You can look at the installer at www.mevislab.de -> Downloads, take one of the Linux-Installers. If you want, I can also give you the scripts, that create such a installer. They are a little bit confused written, since they had to be finished yesterday, as ever (and laying around since, annoying me, when I look at the code). But may be they help or at least inspire you, doing the same thing but better. Regards Stephan -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
