[Pythonmac-SIG] Installing Pygame

[Dav Clark]

(I accidentally sent this just to arthamax)

Pygame is the most difficult package I've installed by hand on the  
mac.  I suspect the fink approach would be the easiest if you insist  
on python 2.6 and it supports pygame all with binary packages.  I use  
MacPorts, which I've found to be more up-to-date and integrated with  
OSX (at least for scientific python type stuff), but with that you'll  
be building software for a good many hours!

The nastiest requirement for building pygame was pyobjc.  Now that you  
can easy-install pyobjc, it is a lot easier, but still non-trivial.   
There are also a number of SDL frameworks that need to be installed.   
And also numpy.  You will also need to install Xcode and also a  
fortran compiler.  You'll probably want to install a recent setuptools  
as well to get easy-install.

The installers for pygame are pretty simple-minded - they will only  
install to a "framework" build (which you download from python.org,  
NOT pre-installed on your system) of the corresponding version (i.e.  
2.4 or 2.5).  BUT - if you install a framework build of python 2.4 or  
2.5, the pygame (and pyobjc) installers do it all.  Honestly, you will  
gain little by the latest-and-greatest python 2.6.2.  Python 2.5  
supports most modern python idioms, and you can just run the pygame  
installer and you're done.  Your book includes a windows installer for  
python 2.3!  So, I'm sure you won't miss much.

If I were starting a new project that didn't really depend on pygame,  
I'd use pyglet.  Based on my minimal experience, it is far easier to  
install and somewhat nicer with its event-loop semantics and text  
handling.  You might also look at vpython for a graphics presentation  
framework that was designed with teaching in mind - they have some  
nice tutorials on their homepage.

Cheers,
Dav

On Jun 29, 2009, at 12:30 PM, arthamax at sbcglobal.net wrote:

> I am using a Mac PPC with Tiger 10.4.11 and I recently downloaded  
> and installed Python 2.6.2. and I am having difficulties getting  
> started.

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