With python 2.4.3 and 2.5 I can't build a Windows 
installer on Linux. I get the following error:

Warning: Can't read registry to find the necessary 
compiler setting
Make sure that Python modules _winreg, win32api or 
win32con are installed.
removing 'build/bdist.linux-i686/wininst' (and 
everything under it)


I can still create an installer with 2.3.5

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The message you get is a warning only; you can ignore it.

However, it still fails because it can't determine what
msvcrt version the target python was built with. It needs to
find that out because it needs to decide whether to use
wininst-6.exe or wininst-7.1.exe.

Thomas, can you think of a way to fix this?

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For pure distributions, bdist_wininst should create
installers that are independent on the Python version.  This
worked up to Python 2.3, starting with 2.4 problems could
arise because different MS C runtime libs are used.

So, to fix this problem, even for pure distributions it
should be required to specify the target-version command
line switch.  When building on non-windows systems, or even
on Windows systems for another Python version than the one
used to build the installer, bdist_wininst.py could hardcode
the knowledge about Python version/MSVC version for the
official python.org releases.

This will fail if someone builds his own version of Python,
for example 2.5 with MSVC 8.  The real solution would be to
avoid having wininst-XXX.exe use the C runtime library at all.

OTOH, in my experience using the wrong C runtime library
only has small effects - the installer would fail to show
output from the pre- or post-install scripts (if they are
used at all).

Can this be closed, Martin?  When I try 'setup.py bdist_wininst' on Linux, I get the warning but an exe is built.

Ah, right. Closing this as invalid: the message is a warning, not an error.