Our primary concern at this stage is deployment for Windows users.

There's two things we have to do:

1. Package a standalone Python program which can be run without requiring third party libraries to be installed

2. Guide the user through Installation on their machine.

Packaging

• Py2Exe - proven tool for packaging a standalone Python program for Windows

• python win-setup.py py2exe

• Py2App - tool for packaging a standalone Python program for Mac OSX

• cx_Freeze - an alternative which might be worth looking at

Installation

• Windows Installer Authoring Tools for Developers

• InstallShield - widely used commercial tool for creating Windows installers - I (David) hate it, but it is one way to get a nice pretty MSI for Windows

• Wise Installer - another commercial installer tool, not so widely used, but from my experience is easy to use

• Visual Studio apparantly includes a reasonable installer tool

• NSIS - Nullsoft Scriptable Install System, not clear if it generates MSI files?

• IZFree - Free installer tools, still requires a lot of work to use

• InstallBase - another one

• Microsoft Installer SDK

• MaSaI - freeware/commercial by Waiheke Island hackers

• Installer2Go - freeware/commercial

• CornerHouse - another one