[IPython-dev] pylab executable

[Fernando Perez]

On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 9:01 AM, John Hunter <jdh2358 at gmail.com> wrote:
> This came through the mpl feature request tracker (add a "pylab"
> executable to the bin dir")
>
>  https://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1910613&group_id=80706&atid=560723
>
> SInce this is really an ipython feature request, I'm moving it over
> here (it is assigned to fer_perez on the mpl tracker).

I'm  not fully opposed, but to some extent I'm not sure it's really
needed.  It's one of  those things along Guido's "not every 2-line
function has to be part of the stdlib".  But if you think that  it
would help the beginners, we can certainly include  it.

I would, however, suggest:

- make it a python rather than a shell script, for portability reasons
(we have Win32 users for whom a /bin/sh script won't work  right).

- Make it the equivalent of 'ipython  -pylab -p pylab'. I know it
sounds a bit confusing,  but there's a method to the madness: -pylab
should do the absolute minimum: basically load pylab and figure out
the threading issues.  It's a special option because it encodes a lot
of initialization behavior that can't be done afterwards.  But by
having this script call a pylab *profile*, we can put other
customizations that we may think of later in the profile, and it gives
users a clean way to tweak it by making a personal profile if they
feel like it.

Feel free to tag this into ipython's bug tracker:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ipython

Cheers,

f