[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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