Why I love python.

[kosh]

On Friday 13 August 2004 1:34 pm, Christopher T King wrote:
> On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, kosh wrote:
> > Why is there a need for a stand alone executable? At least on all the
> > unixes whether something is executable is just determined by the
> > executable bit on the file.
>
> Not if you don't have the interpreter installed.
>

So install the runtime. If you want to run the .NET stuff you need to have the 
the .NET CLR or Mono installed. If you want to run java apps you need the jvm 
etc. Overall once a runtime is installed it makes distributing apps a lot 
easier since the actual thing you need to send someone is tiny. Also at least 
on unixes I have not run into a box in about 6 years or so that did not have 
python and perl installed so in practice I have not run into that problem.

> > I can execute a python program just as transparently as one in
> > compiled c, c++,  etc. I really don't see the point of that.
>
> Indeed, you can do that just as easily on Windows, too.  The point of a
> stand-alone executable is not to make running the script easier, but to
> make distribution easier.  Users don't need to install Python to run a
> Python script if it's a stand-alone executable.

Overall it would be better if there was an easy way on windows to get the 
runtime installed since then you can send users far smaller files, smaller 
updates and it makes it easier for people to patch their systems. I have seen 
more then a few cases where a bug like temp file creation was found to be a 
problem in python and in some c code. However the difference is that you can 
update the python runtime and all affected python programs are fixed. The 
same is not true of the c versions. 

One of them I have run into which is a pain is stuff like openssl. When that 
gets updated it seems a whole bunch of programs have to be compiled to work 
with it again. The change is source compatible but for whatever reason the 
bug fix breaks binary compatibility on a number of apps. Just update the 
runtime though for things like python,java, etc and all apps on those 
runtimes just become fixed.