I had an unusual problem tonight running makepy to install some
Microsoft COM interfaces in a Python 2.5 Windows XP installation
created using the ActiveState installer.

In earlier versions of Python, the files were generated to:

   \PythonXX\Lib\site-packages\win32com\gen_py

But in my 2.5 installation they were generated to my temp
directory, in my case this was:

  c:\temp\gen_py\2.5

I hadn't paid attention to the messages and when I cleared my
temp directory, which I occasionally do, the COM interfaces
stopped working.

Tracing through the makepy code, I found the following
(reformatted for email) in

    \Python25\Lib\site-packages\win32com\__init__.py

if not __gen_path__:
  try:
    import win32com.gen_py
    __gen_path__ = sys.modules["win32com.gen_py"].__path__[0]
  except ImportError:
    # If a win32com\gen_py directory already exists, then we use it
    # (gencache doesn't insist it have an __init__, but our
    # __import__ above does!
    __gen_path__ = \
     os.path.abspath(os.path.join(__path__[0], "gen_py"))
    if not os.path.isdir(__gen_path__):
      # We used to dynamically create a directory under win32com -
      # but this sucks.  If the dir doesn't already exist, we we
      # create a version specific directory under the user temp
      # directory.
      __gen_path__ = os.path.join(
                win32api.GetTempPath(), "gen_py",
                "%d.%d" % (sys.version_info[0],
                sys.version_info[1]))

I was able to make everything work right by creating the gen_py
directory in the expected place and re-running makepy.  But I'm
curious to know:

 1. Why does it suck to create gen_py dynamically?

 2. Why didn't I have a gen_py directory already?  Did I somehow
    destory it or is it not created by default?

 3. Why is the temp directory the alternate choice for where to
    put these?

Thanks.

    Alan
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