> I don’t understand the notions of standard vs. custom.
> Does standard mean setuptools?  #12394 is not quite ready yet, so
> nothing is set in stone, but if possible I’d prefer to generate
> pysetup.exe.  Let’s move the sub-discussion there.

Okay, we'll continue on #12394, but I'll comment here on "standard vs. custom" - by "standard", I meant the setuptools way of doing it, but not necessarily using the setuptools code - see my comment in #12394 on an alternative. The basic method is that used by setuptools, but the specific implementation is different - somescript.exe opens somescript-script.py, reads a shebang line to find which Python to invoke, then invokes it with the script. By "custom" I meant "something else" without anything specific in mind - and I'm not sure it's worth the bother and extra work of a customised pysetup.exe.

Perhaps all or at least some of this could be simplified in 3.3 if the PEP 397 launcher is included in Python. Mark Hammond has re-started discussions about this on Python-dev, and hopefully we'll have a consensus to get it in.