installing wxPython on Linux and Windows

[Peter Maas]

Recently I replaced Win2k with Linux on my desktop computer. Using mostly
multi-platform software I thought this would be easy. It was not as
easy as expected getting wxPython to work. There seemed to be no SuSE RPM
so I installed from source. Here are my steps (gtk 2.4 was already
installed):

- Built wxWidgets (.configure --enable-unicode)
- Built wxPython (python setup.py install)
   error: "you should use wx-config program for compilation"
- Tried wx-config with various options
- Examined (huge) error output more closely: There was a message
   "Usage: wx-config [options]" right at the beginning
- Debugged setup.py: message was caused by wx-config option unicode=no
- Debugged config.py: wx-config option unicode=no was caused by UNICODE=0
- Set UNICODE=1, next build, error: compiler couldn't find stc.h
- Set BUILD_STC = 0 and some other BUILD_s as well
- I worked! started demo.py, splash screen started up and - error in
   demo's Main.py 'DemoCodeEditor' object has no attribute 'editor'
- Ah, STC is for StyledTextControl! set BUILD_STC = 1 again but how can
   I get styledTextControl?
- Downloaded/built scintilla, but where's the slot for scintilla.a?
- Realized that I had to build STC (wxWidgets' contribs) separately.
- Built wxPython, start demo.py - it worked FINALLY!

Took me with all tries and dead ends approx. 8 hours.

Same task on Win2k: download wxPython-setup.exe, double-click, done.
Took me approx. 1 minute. This strikes me. Why are some tasks so hard
on Linux and so easy on Windows? After all wxPython/Win and wxPython/Lin
are made by the same developers. My guess: the software deployment
infrastructure on Linux needs to be improved.

Disclaimer: I don't want to blame anyone here. wxPython is a fine
piece of software otherwise I wouldn't have tried so hard to get
it working.

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Peter Maas,  M+R Infosysteme,  D-52070 Aachen,  Tel +49-241-93878-0
E-mail 'cGV0ZXIubWFhc0BtcGx1c3IuZGU=\n'.decode('base64')
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