Some stupid questions

[Gary Herron]

On Tuesday 11 December 2001 09:04 am, Another rookie wrote:
> Hi I'm an old fart and a newbie. So I hope you'll bear with me and answer a
> few basic questions for me. Feel free as patronizing as you want.
>
> I've just downloaded the latest version of Python 2.2, and have started
> learning to program from the web tutorials. If I stick with it ......
>
> ... Will I be able to compile my progs as executables, so that they can run
> on anybodies machine, whether or not they have a version of Python
> installed?
>
> ... If not, does jpython or jython allow me to compile my progs as java
> apps, so that they will run on any machine with java?

(These questions are not stupid, because, in fact, the process of
"freezing" a program is neither easy nor obvious.  The packages for
doing so have been evolving for years now, and are getting quite
sophisticated.)

Yes to all the above questions. We call it "freezing" a program and
there are several way to do it.

  Gordon McMillan's Installer: I've used earlier versions with nice
  results.  Version 5, just recently announced, looks even better,
  apperently working on both Window and Linux
    http://www.mcmillan-inc.com/install5_ann.html

  Thomas Heller's py2exe: Works well for creating Windows executables,
  but has no Linux support.
    http://starship.python.net/crew/theller/py2exe/

  The Jython package has "jythonc" which compiles a Python program to
  Java and can zip it and dependencies into a jar file.  I've used it
  to build applets which run in web browsers.

  Python is still distributed with a freeze.py, a much older package
  for freezing a program.  Its functionality is far surpassed by the
  above packages.

Gary Herron