How to run installed python script?

Question

I used distutils to install my python package, with this setup.py :

import distutils.core

args = {
    'name' :            'plugh',
    'version' :         '1.0',
    'scripts' :         [ "scripts/plugh" ],
    'packages':         [ "plugh" ],
}

d = distutils.core.setup(
    **args
)

On linux/mac, it works as expected:

% plugh
hello world
% 

On windows, the script "plugh" does not run:

C:\Python25\Scripts>plugh
'plugh' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

C:\Python25\Scripts>

I found the bug report at http://bugs.python.org/issue7231 that the \Scripts directory is not added to PATH when you install python, so I applied the workaround described in that ticket (i.e. add C:\Python25\Scripts to PATH)

C:\Python25\Scripts>path
PATH=c:\Python25\Scripts;C:\Program Files\Legato\nsr\bin;C:\WINDOWS\system32;C:\
WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\System32\Wbem;C:\Program Files\QuickTime\QTSystem\;c:\python2
5;c:\local;C:\WINDOWS\system32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0

Is this something that just doesn't work on Windows? And if so, how exactly are you supposed to use python scripts on a windows machine?

I suppose that I could detect Windows, and add an additional script to the list, called "plugh.bat" containing something like:

@echo off
c:\python25\python.exec c:\python25\scripts\plugh %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9

but is that really the right answer here? I would have thought that with all the customizations that distutils contains for windows, there would be a better answer than that.

Answer 1

windows uses the extension of the file to determine how it will run.

Name your file plugh.py and use plugh.py on the prompt to call it.