Installing data files into %APPDATA% with distutils on Windows 7 X64

Question

My setup routine using distutils that works perfectly fine on Windows XP does not work for Windows 7. Here are the specifics:

My package has a lot of config files which I install into %APPDATA%. On Windows I run setup.py with the bdist_wininst option to create an installer. On Win7 the installer is then executed as Administrator so that the module can be installed into %PROGRAMFILES%\\Python etc. The installation does not report any errors but as you might have guessed the config files will not have been installed into %APPDATA% nor anywhere else (I searched for them).

If I open a cmd as Administrator and install my package with the install option directly (setup.py install), everything works perfectly fine however.

So, what am I missing here? Is this a limitation in the graphical installer or am I doing something wrong?

Answer 1

You may use something like the common solution on *nix. Install the config files to %PROGRAMFILES% , and copy them to %APPDATA% when the program detects a particular user is running the program for the first time (which can be detected by checking that the config files are missing).