Improvements to Windows installation process

[Manichean]

I updated to 0.7.51 yesterday and 0.7.52 today and just wanted to say that zipping up the Python code really seems to have worked. The installer is now running through the verification almost instantly.

Thanks for that particular improvement, and kudos to whomever thought of it

[kovidgoyal]

You're welcome I actually expected that to have a big impact for a while. I was reluctant to do it because it makes it a little harder to patch a calibre install, which was a facility used by some calibre developers to have users test small changes. However, I realized that thanks to windows exposing zip files as folders, it isn't that much harder. ANd it has the added benfit that any patches get automatically removed at the next upgrade, unlike with using them in unzipped form.

The only downside is that it is now not possible to install calibre in a folder with non ascii characters in its path.

[Manichean]

This is purely a gut feeling, I didn't verify this (I'd have to downgrade in order to do that), but is it possible that this change also resulted in startup being a lot faster than pre-0.7.51?

[chaley]

With my 1500 book production library, with the zip change, the startup time went from 1.2 seconds to .9 seconds (measured several times).

[kovidgoyal]

Yes importing from a zip file is faster than from the filesystem, as long as the zip file does not use compression. I verified this before making the change.

[Manichean]

Great stuff.