novelWriter/setup/README.md

Build and Install novelWriter

The root folder of the repository contains a standard setup.py script. The setup folder contains necessary files for the setup process, like icons and other files, and it also contains additional scripts that are included in the minimal zip packages.

Setup Script

The setup.py script in the root folder has all the necessary commands for generating packages, installing icons, launcher, and file associations on Linux and Windows (no macOS support yet).

In addition, it is a wrapper for setuptools and accept all commands associated with this tool.

To list all custom package and install options in this script, run:

./setup.py help

Windows Scripts

The windows_install.bat and windows_uninstall.bat are provided as convenience scripts for Windows users who aren't used to running commands from command line. They are both located in the setup folder in the source package, but in the minimal zip package for Windows, they can be found in the root folder.

These scripts are designed to be double-clicked by the user, but can also be run from the command line tool. In either case, they will check if Python is properly installed, and then run the commands to install or uninstall the core dependencies of novelWriter, and then setup or remove the desktop icon, start menu icon and registry entries.