[Baypiggies] ctypes presentation material online
Dennis Reinhardt
DennisR at dair.com
Fri May 12 20:27:25 CEST 2006
At 10:21 AM 5/12/2006, Marilyn Davis wrote:
>If you had it to do over again, would you use ctypes? Or try one of
>the other options, even though they take more memory?
Tough question, because memory is but one part of the tradeoff.
First, let me say that what I am doing is building a ready-to-run program,
an exe which when run, well, just runs. This is in contrast to other
deployments where you first need to install Python and a number of other
components first. BitTorrent install IIRC is of this type, for example.
Adding other components can greatly complicate the user install. There is
a major cost borne by the end user in how well integrated the components
are. Adding more components creates problems beyond just download
size. In order to be ready-to-run, you need some scheme for finding
components you have installed which does not conflict with any Python
components the user may have installed already. I solve this by altering
sys.path at startup. I would have to include additional components and
know that there are compatible with this (i.e. that they can operate
independent of registry settings).
I never got far enough with WxPython to see if this was a problem. There
is a major learning curve.
I also had a learning curve implementing DialogDevil (my program) with
ctypes. Even with the 40-50 hours I spent tracking down the crash and the
learning curve with ctypes itself (non-trivial), I would still write
DialogDevil using this approach. Here is why:
I could be reasonably assured I would not have
packaging and deployment issues downstream
I could be assured that the entire non-COM
Windows API was available to me and that I
would not get stuck late in the project because
some interface was missing or not usable.
The simple functionality was manageable. I
could isolate problems with ctypes. With more
complex packages, my support burden for
isolating problems is increased.
The download size was a very nice bonus.
However, in a larger sense, no, I have not done it again. Currently, I am
using a web-browser as a user interface. The idea here is that I have
written an http server and user interactions are via web forms. In so
doing, I get client-server architecture nearly for free with an obvious
upgrade to multi-user implementations. This is not a benefit for
DialogDevil type products but is compelling for others.
Regards, Dennis
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| Dennis | DennisR at dair.com |
| Reinhardt | Powerful Anti-Spam |
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