[Python-ideas] python on mobile

[Frank, Matthew I]

On Tue, Dec 30, 2014 at 1058, Chris Barker chris.barker at noaa.gov wrote:
> BTW, one thing I'd like to be able to build is what I call a "BILS" (Browser Interface, Local Server) app:
> you run a web server bundled up in an app that points itself to the browser component for all the UI.
> We've been very successful doing this on Windows and OS-X, as a way to provide a self contained
> desktop app, and a hosted Web App with almost entirely one code base, and an identical user interface.
>
> (http://cameochemicals.noaa.gov/ and http://response.restoration.noaa.gov/cameochemicals)
> 
> (Python / Pyramid on the back end, desktop is the local browser hosted by a wxPython wrapper)
>
> We'd like to be able to port that to iOS and Android, but there doesn't appear to be a solid python
> option that we could run a Pyramid web server on Mobile at this point -- maybe I'm wrong)

This is what I've been trying to do as well, for Android.  I'm particularly interested in running an
iPython server connected to the local Android browser.  For iPad there is an example of someone
having achieved exactly this: http://computableapp.com/.  But I don't know if they've actually
made any of their porting knowledge public.

For Android I've been focusing on submitting patches to CPython 3.4/3.5 for things that can be
argued to be "just cross-compilation bugs" in the Cpython source.

For example:
http://bugs.python.org/issue21668 just fixes a missing -lm flag during compilation (that doesn't
matter on Linux/MacOS/Windows, but is technically required, and causes problems with the
Android dynamic loader if it is missing).

http://bugs.python.org/issue20306 just takes care of the fact that pw_gecos isn't actually required
by Posix.

-Matt