[Pythonmac-SIG] Freeze on Mac

[Jason Petrone]

On Mon, Jul 14, 2003 at 12:21:43PM -0400, Chris wrote:
> I may have got lost in the shuffle.
> 
> Is it possible to freeze an app on the MacOSX so it can be
> distributed without any (separate) MacPython interpreter?

You want bundlebuilder.py, it comes with Python.

'''
bundlebuilder.py -- Tools to assemble MacOS X (application) bundles.

This module contains two classes to build so called "bundles" for
MacOS X. BundleBuilder is a general tool, AppBuilder is a subclass
specialized in building application bundles.

[Bundle|App]Builder objects are instantiated with a bunch of keyword
arguments, and have a build() method that will do all the work. See
the class doc strings for a description of the constructor arguments.

The module contains a main program that can be used in two ways:

  % python bundlebuilder.py [options] build
  % python buildapp.py [options] build

Where "buildapp.py" is a user-supplied setup.py-like script following
this model:

  from bundlebuilder import buildapp
  buildapp(<lots-of-keyword-args>)
'''

 
> Is there a compiler in the works or is PytoC++ the only game in town?

Why do you want to compile to native?  There are three common reasons:

 - Performance:
      Because of python dynamic nature, native compilation is not likely
      to give that much of a speed improvement.

 - Ease of distribution:
      Hopefully bundlebuilder on MacOS, py2exe on win32, and McMillan 
      Installer everywhere else, solve this problem sufficiently.  I
      distribute python programs quite frequently, and I take pride in
      knowing all but the savviest users are not aware they are using
      anything other than a native binary.

  - Obfuscation    
      This is the most compelling reason I know for native compilation.
      I have no idea how one could implement effective anti-piracy
      measures for a bytecode compiled program.

Jason