[Twisted-Python] Binary wheels for Twisted on Windows?

[Scott, Barry]

On Tuesday, 28 May 2019 12:04:05 BST Griatch Art wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm investigating installing the Evennia MU* server on Windows. We use
> Twisted and will be requiring Python3.7 in our next release. I need to make
> easy-to-use install instructions since a lot of Windows users use our
> library.
> 
> I tested with a Windows7 64bit VM and installed everything from scratch to
> emulate what a non-dev Windows user would see. I don't have Windows10 so
> can't compare to the install experience there (but Windows7 64bit is still
> relevant, having something like 24% of the active Windows user-base
> according to Steam).
> 
> Using pip to install Evennia, at the Twisted requirement install step I run
> into an error telling me that I need "Microsoft Visual C++ build tools"
> from the URL https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/downloads. The first issue
> is that there does not appear to be any build-tools package named like that
> on that page or sub-page (at least not what I could find after digging
> around). I tried to install a few similarly-named packages, like "Visual
> Studio Build Tools", but  had no luck getting past the Twisted install
> point. So that recommendation-string should likely be updated.
> 
> The thing is though, while I could probably personally figure out how to
> set it up eventually, our Windows users are likely the least tech-savvy of
> our users. Requiring them to set up a compiler environment (despite us
> telling them that Python code does not need compilation) a bit too much.
> It seems Twisted has distributed binary Windows wheels in the past, would
> it be possible to get them again? Or should I recommend some other,
> specific install procedure for our Windows users?
> 
> Cheers,
> Griatch, Evennia dev

What I do for my python projects on windows is turn them into a setup.exe that 
the user can run in the traditional way. There are many tools to help you do 
this. Then the user does not need to install anything except your setup.exe.

You do not need python installed on the users system.
And you can sort out the compilation issues when you kit the project.

Make sure you use the right version of visual C++ that matches your
python version.  See https://wiki.python.org/moin/WindowsCompilers
(Assume the same compiler for 3.7 and 3.8 as 3.6).

I package pysvn, Barry's Emacs and SCM workbench this way for windows.
You can use a similar approach for macOS.

Barry