How to create a shortcut in startmenu using setuptools windows installer

Question

I want to create a start menu or Desktop shortcut for my Python windows installer package. I am trying to follow https://docs.python.org/3.4/distutils/builtdist.html#the-postins

Answer 1

Like others have commented here and elsewhere the support functions don't seem to work at all (at least not with setuptools). After a good day's worth of searching through various resources I found a way to create at least the Desktop shortcut. I'm sharing my solution (basically an amalgam of code I found here and here). I should add that my case is slightly different from yasar's, because it creates a shortcut to an installed package (i.e. an .exe file in Python's Scripts directory) instead of a script.

In short, I added a post_install function to my setup.py, and then used the Python extensions for Windows to create the shortcut. The location of the Desktop folder is read from the Windows registry (there are other methods for this, but they can be unreliable if the Desktop is at a non-standard location).

#!/usr/bin/env python

import os
import sys
import sysconfig
if sys.platform == 'win32':
    from win32com.client import Dispatch
    import winreg

def get_reg(name,path):
    # Read variable from Windows Registry
    # From https://stackoverflow.com/a/35286642
    try:
        registry_key = winreg.OpenKey(winreg.HKEY_CURRENT_USER, path, 0,
                                       winreg.KEY_READ)
        value, regtype = winreg.QueryValueEx(registry_key, name)
        winreg.CloseKey(registry_key)
        return value
    except WindowsError:
        return None

def post_install():
    # Creates a Desktop shortcut to the installed software

    # Package name
    packageName = 'mypackage'

    # Scripts directory (location of launcher script)
    scriptsDir = sysconfig.get_path('scripts')

    # Target of shortcut
    target = os.path.join(scriptsDir, packageName + '.exe')

    # Name of link file
    linkName = packageName + '.lnk'

    # Read location of Windows desktop folder from registry
    regName = 'Desktop'
    regPath = r'Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders'
    desktopFolder = os.path.normpath(get_reg(regName,regPath))

    # Path to location of link file
    pathLink = os.path.join(desktopFolder, linkName)
    shell = Dispatch('WScript.Shell')
    shortcut = shell.CreateShortCut(pathLink)
    shortcut.Targetpath = target
    shortcut.WorkingDirectory = scriptsDir
    shortcut.IconLocation = target
    shortcut.save()

setup(name='mypackage',
      ...,
      ...)

if sys.argv[1] == 'install' and sys.platform == 'win32':
    post_install()

Here's a link to a full setup script in which I used this:

https://github.com/KBNLresearch/iromlab/blob/master/setup.py