On Tue, Feb 07, 2017 at 12:05:49AM -0600, C Anthony Risinger wrote:
How do I redistribute and successfully install Python, dependencies, and an application with the least possible steps for the end user? For any platform or persona?
For Linux, Unix and Mac, where you can generally expect Python is already installed (although perhaps not the most recent version you would like), I think the best way to distribute Python apps is as a zip file: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0441/ For Windows, it's not *quite* so simple, as the end-user needs to install Python themselves.
I prefer dynamic applications redistribute their runtime,
I don't. That means that when there's a serious security bug in Python, instead of patching it once (the system Python), I have to patch two, ten, a hundred applications, some of which I don't even know are written in Python, some of which may never have a patch released, or if they do, it may be weeks or months later.
Containers are have greatly impacted how people think about distribution. There is a trend to use fast/small containers as CLI tools.
It's the future! :-) https://circleci.com/blog/its-the-future/ On the other hand: https://circleci.com/blog/it-really-is-the-future/ -- Steve