Need Windows user / developer to help with Pynguin

[Terry Reedy]

On 10/27/2011 3:38 PM, Lee Harr wrote:
>
> I develop the free python-based turtle graphics application pynguin.
>
> http://pynguin.googlecode.com/
>
>
> Lately I have been getting a lot of positive comments from people
> who use the program, but I am also getting a lot of feedback from
> people on Windows (mostly beginners) who are having trouble
> getting the program running.
>
> I don't use Windows myself, though I have found access occasionally
> to fix bugs. I just don't know enough about Windows culture to be
> able to make a reliable method for installing or running the program.
>
> The method that I wrote for Linux also works on Windows, but it has
> to be run from the command prompt.
>
> I am hoping someone can look at what is there and come up with a
> reliable method or a simple set of steps that people can follow to get
> up and running. Hopefully without having to resort to the command
> prompt.
>
> I started a wiki page here:
> http://code.google.com/p/pynguin/wiki/InstallingPynguinOnWindows
> but I can't even test if it actually works....

In my experience, double clicking on x.zip should open the zip in the 
zip program (xp) but not actually extract. Win7, with zip built in, just 
treats x.zip as a directory in Explorer, with no external program required.

You pynguin.zip contains one top level file -- a directory called 
pynguin that contains multiple files*. Extracting pynguin.zip to a 
pynguin directory in the same directory as pynguin.zip, the default 
behavior with Win7 at least, creates a new pynguin directory that 
contains the extracted pynguin directory. So one has to run 
pynguin/pynguin/setup.py. In other words, there is one level too many. 
People can erase 'pynguin' from the target list to avoid this. (I am not 
sure 7zip on xp has the same default.)

*You would make things easier, at least for Windows users, if you added 
the proper extensions.
pynguin => pynguin.py
README => README.txt
etc for other text files.

If you are using setup.py, I do not know of any alternative to using a 
command prompt. But do tell people to find it with Start/All 
Programs/Accessories/Command Prompt. Then two choices that I know of.

1."cd dir", where dir is the path to the directory containing setup.py. 
Of course, for "python setup.py install" to work, people must have the 
Python installation path python-dir in the PATH environmental variable, 
which it will not be unless they put it there. Without that, 
"python-dir\python setup.py install" is required.

2. "cd python-dir" followed by "python pynguin-dir\setup.py install"

I may have missed something, but I do not actually run many Python apps. 
One I have used (renpy) makes separate installers for Windows, *nix, and 
Mac. As I remember, is does a standard Windows installation with one of 
the free installers, asking where to put the files and if Start menu 
icons are wanted. I ran it with a desktop shortcup to the main program.

The new disutiles2/distribute/packaging package plus a new python 
launcher for Windows should make things easier within a year, by the 
time 3.3 is out.

For the occasion library package, I prefer to directly extract to 
site-packages.

-- 
Terry Jan Reedy