annotate README.rst @ 44763:94f4f2ec7dee stable

packaging: support building Inno installer with PyOxidizer

We want to start distributing Mercurial on Python 3 on
Windows. PyOxidizer will be our vehicle for achieving that.

This commit implements basic support for producing Inno
installers using PyOxidizer.

While it is an eventual goal of PyOxidizer to produce
installers, those features aren't yet implemented. So our
strategy for producing Mercurial installers is similar to
what we've been doing with py2exe: invoke a build system to
produce files then stage those files into a directory so they
can be turned into an installer.

We had to make significant alterations to the pyoxidizer.bzl
config file to get it to produce the files that we desire for
a Windows install. This meant differentiating the build targets
so we can target Windows specifically.

We've added a new module to hgpackaging to deal with interacting
with PyOxidizer. It is similar to pyexe: we invoke a build process
then copy files to a staging directory. Ideally these extra
files would be defined in pyoxidizer.bzl. But I don't think it
is worth doing at this time, as PyOxidizer's config files are
lacking some features to make this turnkey.

The rest of the change is introducing a variant of the
Inno installer code that invokes PyOxidizer instead of
py2exe.

Comparing the Python 2.7 based Inno installers with this
one, the following changes were observed:

* No lib/*.{pyd, dll} files
* No Microsoft.VC90.CRT.manifest
* No msvc{m,p,r}90.dll files
* python27.dll replaced with python37.dll
* Add vcruntime140.dll file

The disappearance of the .pyd and .dll files is acceptable, as
PyOxidizer has embedded these in hg.exe and loads them from
memory.

The disappearance of the *90* files is acceptable because those
provide the Visual C++ 9 runtime, as required by Python 2.7.
Similarly, the appearance of vcruntime140.dll is a requirement
of Python 3.7.

Differential Revision: https://phab.mercurial-scm.org/D8473

Mercurial
=========

Mercurial is a fast, easy to use, distributed revision control tool
for software developers.

Basic install::

 $ make            # see install targets
 $ make install    # do a system-wide install
 $ hg debuginstall # sanity-check setup
 $ hg              # see help

Running without installing::

 $ make local      # build for inplace usage
 $ ./hg --version  # should show the latest version

See https://mercurial-scm.org/ for detailed installation
instructions, platform-specific notes, and Mercurial user information.