Python on a USB storage device?

[Eddie Corns]

"Kevin Altis" <altis at semi-retired.com> writes:

>Does anyone have experience running Python from a USB storage device?
>Whether it is the need for doing a demo of your application, doing a bit of
>consulting, or just showing off Python, it would be handy to be able to run
>Python on machines that don't already have Python installed. I'm thinking
>about giving this a try, but wondered if anyone is already doing it and the
>downsides, if any?

>CD-ROM is not very effective because the media is read-only and too big to
>carry in your pocket. I think USB 2.0 is supposed to be roughly 20x faster
>than USB for storage devices, but I'm guessing that if you can live with the
>load times for machines that don't have USB 2.0, plain USB should still be
>effective.

>HP Windows desktops, Linux, and Mac OS X already have Python installed and
>Mac OS X (Panther) will have Python 2.3. But even so, you generally have to
>install additional packages to get the functionality you want. Having all
>you need on a USB storage device and not needing to install anything on the
>host machine seems like it would be very convenient.

Yes, I have an oldish windows Python distribution on a 128Mb stick.  It works
quite nicely but you do have to be aware that without the usual registry
entries it won't search for libraries etc. so well.  I tend to keep all
programs to be run in one directory.  I also pruned lots of stuff out to
minimise space used.  It would be nice to have an installer that allowed you
to selectively install core plus whatever you might actually want.  Or maybe
there is one, I'm not a windows person which is the whole reason for having
this, it allows me to quickly do things on user's machines.

It would work on Linux too except you need to have permission to create mount
tables etc. to get the filesystem.  {Network tip #4265: never ask whether
something can be done, just state that it can't - that'll get you a lot more
responses :)}

Eddie