python is great

[M.-A. Lemburg]

On 2009-01-06 18:36, Joe Strout wrote:
> I've actually been rather frustrated by Python lately.  It's great at
> some things, but rather poor at others.  In the latter category is
> building a neatly packaged executable that can be shipped to users and
> run reliably on their machine.  On the Mac in particular, if you want
> your app to run on any PowerPC or Intel machine runing 10.4 or later,
> and you're using anything not in the standard framework (such as
> MySQLdb), it's a bit of a nightmare.
> 
> Compare this to, say, REALbasic, where you just check "Mac OS X
> Universal" in the Build Settings, click Build, and you're done.  (RB has
> its own issues, of course.)

You're looking for py2app:

http://undefined.org/python/py2app.html

(creating a button that invokes it is left as exercise to the interested
reader :-)

> So I would say that Python as a language is great, and its standard
> framework is great.  But its (many) IDEs are pretty poor, and the
> process of building a polished, packaged app is abysmal. 

It's certainly work, but that's always the case for nicely polished
apps :-)

For packaging, you can choose from a multitude of installer builders -
none of which are really Python specific.

We tend to use InnoSetup on Windows, the Mac OS installer for Mac OS X
and an installer shell script for Unix. More recently we've found
InstallJammer which looks very promising, esp. when building applications
for multiple platforms.

> And there are
> some things (such as Flash-style web applets) that you still can't do at
> all in Python, even after all these years.

You're looking for Silverlight:

http://www.voidspace.org.uk/ironpython/silverlight/index.shtml

> But of course, the nice thing about an open-source environment is that,
> with enough motivation, time, and expertise, one can fix the most
> annoying limitations oneself.  And if I stick with Python over the
> upcoming years, I'll certainly do my part.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
eGenix.com

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