I really like Python but ....

[Tim Peters]

[Bill Walker]
> It's absolutely the most thought-out and easy to program language
> that I have tried (starting with Fortran in the 70's up to Java
> recently); HOWEVER, I can't get too excited about it until a true
> compiler for Python comes along.

Hmm.  Whenever someone asks for "a compiler", what they *really* want is
always a mystery.

> I'll accept even a decent byte-code compiler

OK, you don't care about "a compiler" in the usual Fortran sense.

> that locks up all the modules, dlls, etc, into one exe.

Or in any other known sense <wink>.

> No, py2exe doesn't work well; especially with tkinter -- leaves
> out modules.

Ah.

> Without this capability it is just too hard to distribute code to
> any but those that already have Python installed (which are
> usually other programmers.)

Java and Fortran don't meet your criteria either:  if you compile a Java
program and distribute it, your users have to already have megabytes and
megabytes of Java runtime components installed on their machine else it's
useless.  Ditto for C, and wrt C runtime libraries, at least in the Windows
world.  Etc.  If you want a self-contained Python+tkinter app, then you'll
have to wrap up all of the Python language runtime, + Tcl's, + Tk, *and* all
the platform C libraries those rely on in turn.  How big a download do you
want to endure to say "Hello, world"?

If it's unbounded <wink>, check out:

    http://www.mcmillan-inc.com/install1.htm

That still assumes users have C runtime libraries.

Or you could use Jython, a different implementation of Python that compiles
to Java bytecode.  Then you're restricted to what Java allows you to do
(e.g., no Tkinter, but you can write GUIs with Swing), but the byte-compiled
programs are as portable as Java -- which means not at all to boxes without
a JVM already installed, but quite portable to those that do.