[tahoe-dev] what's the plan for "tahoe.exe"?

[Zooko O'Whielacronx]

Folks:

Thanks in large part to David-Sarah's work, it is now possible to
build a single Windows executable named "tahoe.exe" that contains the
Python interpreter, the Tahoe-LAFS code, and all of the dependencies.

http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/ticket/585# make it work with bbfreeze

Also, following quickstart.html now works much better on Windows:

http://tahoe-lafs.org/source/tahoe-lafs/trunk/docs/quickstart.html

Thanks to the elimination of the dependency on pywin32 (David-Sarah again):

http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/ticket/1274# eliminate pywin32 dependency

And thanks to the fact that we now host binary eggs of all
dependencies which require binary code:

http://tahoe-lafs.org/source/tahoe-lafs/deps/tahoe-lafs-dep-eggs/README.html

(Scroll down to the "windows-x86" and "windows-x86_64" rows of the
"Python 2.6" table.)

Therefore there are now two good ways for Windows users to run Tahoe-LAFS.

Release Manager Brian: shall we host a copy of tahoe.exe for
windows-x86 and another for windows-x86_64 and mention it in the
release announcement? Shall we change quickstart.html to point to it?

I would recommend leaving quickstart.html simpler and leaving
quickstart.html as the primary and best-supported mechanism, even on
Windows. For one thing the tahoe.exe approach is new and as far as I
know has never been tested other than by David-Sarah. For another
thing, I don't know if we want an influx of the kind of Windows users
who can't handle following quickstart.html but can handle downloading
tahoe.exe. I'm not sure the Tahoe-LAFS project is mature enough to
benefit from those users and to offer benefits to them in return.

Regards,

Zooko