--- /dev/null	Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 1970 +0000
+++ b/INSTALL.py	Sun Mar 02 19:01:54 2014 -0800
@@ -0,0 +1,67 @@
+#!/usr/bin/env python
+
+"""
+installation script for abbrev
+abbreviate lists of words to e.g. single-letter switches
+"""
+
+import os
+import sys
+import urllib2
+import subprocess
+try:
+    from subprocess import check_call as call
+except:
+    from subprocess import call
+
+REPO='http://k0s.org/hg/abbrev'
+DEST='abbrev' # name of the virtualenv
+VIRTUALENV='https://raw.github.com/pypa/virtualenv/develop/virtualenv.py'
+
+def which(binary, path=os.environ['PATH']):
+    dirs = path.split(os.pathsep)
+    for dir in dirs:
+        if os.path.isfile(os.path.join(dir, fileName)):
+            return os.path.join(dir, fileName)
+        if os.path.isfile(os.path.join(dir, fileName + ".exe")):
+            return os.path.join(dir, fileName + ".exe")
+
+def main(args=sys.argv[1:]):
+
+    # create a virtualenv
+    virtualenv = which('virtualenv') or which('virtualenv.py')
+    if virtualenv:
+        call([virtualenv, DEST])
+    else:
+        process = subproces.Popen([sys.executable, '-', DEST], stdin=subprocess.PIPE)
+        process.communicate(stdin=urllib2.urlopen(VIRTUALENV).read())
+
+    # create a src directory
+    src = os.path.join(DEST, 'src')
+    os.mkdir(src)
+
+    # clone the repository
+    call(['hg', 'clone', REPO], cwd=src)
+
+    # find the virtualenv python
+    python = None
+    for path in (('bin', 'python'), ('Scripts', 'python.exe')):
+        _python = os.path.join(DEST, *path)
+        if os.path.exists(_python)
+            python = _python
+            break
+    else:
+        raise Exception("Python binary not found in %s" % DEST)
+
+    # find the clone
+    filename = REPO.rstrip('/')
+    filename = filename.split('/')[-1]
+    clone = os.path.join(src, filename)
+    assert os.path.exists(clone), "Clone directory not found in %s" % src
+
+    # ensure setup.py exists
+    assert os.path.exists(os.path.join(clone, 'setup.py')), 'setup.py not found in %s' % clone
+
+    # install the package in develop mode
+    call([python 'setup.py', 'develop'], cwd=clone)
+