[PythonCE] Curious about Python for Windows CE

[Gonzalo Monzón]

Redefined Horizons escribió:

> I am still pretty new to Python, but my company is investigating the 
> possibilty of developing applications on Windows CE Devices, and I had 
> a couple of questions:
>  
> I'd like to use Python as my development environment for Windows CE 
> Devices. What is the current status of Python on Windows CE? Is it 
> still very "experimental", or is it something that I can use for 
> development of a relatively stable application?
>  
> Is there a GUI toolkit for Windows CE that I can use in Python? 
> Something like a port of PyGTK or wxWidgets?
>  
> Is there any work being done with Python for Pocket PCs that run 
> Linux, and not Windows CE?
>  
> Thanks,
>  
> Scott Huey
>
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Hi Scott,

I've been using Python for some of my projects on handhelds from the 
very beginning of the Python 2.3.x WinCE port.

IMHO Python for WindowsCE is, really, very very stable. We have 
developed some applications with it, and I know from first hand 
experience, that it is anything but experimental. Python for WinCE is 
really a great success in terms of reliability.

I'm glad to say we can develop the app. on the PC or the Mac, and then 
just copy the files to the PocketPC, and run as expected: perfect.  No 
need for emulators, cross-compilation...

Can tell you that we have some developments running on PocketPC, and 
being process intensive applications, work smooth and without a single 
problem until today, we stressed it until handheld reached CPU and 
memory usage limits, and have never suffered from crashes. We did some 
more "extreme" testings, pushing to the limits our PocketPC's ARM CPU & 
IO in a multi-threaded communication and data visualization application 
we did develop, and it keeps working smooth until you have no more free 
memory (after 12 hours of intensive network data transmission, 
processing, and in-memory data structures generation), then we got the 
"out of memory" dialog error and Python closes flawlessly.  If I'd got a 
PC with the same memory than in the handheld, result would't be 
different... this application when running on a PC for such time and 
data overhead, eats more than 50 Mb of RAM.... it's obvious the program 
would continue running it handhelp had more memory.

And remember, ctypes is your best friend, when optimizing for memory 
usage (and speed!).

There are only a few hints you need to have in mind when targeting your 
app. to the Python for WinCE, anyway I can say all my scripts that do 
work on WinXP or in MacOS, do work on the WinCE, with only a few 
occasional minor adjustments, in things like Python not knowing what the 
current directory it is (as WinCE OS doesnt have the concept of 
"current" directory, it is an OS issue, but there are easy workarounds).

I only would't use PythonCE if in need to develop a very very fast 
running application, in the case I'd code the interface in C++, and 
maybe, then use Python from inside, or not using it at all... who said 
Python is the right tool for everything? :-) But if your needs for speed 
are more focused in the development side, I doubt anything can beat 
Python, and you still get a pretty good execution speed for the application.

And last but not least, I'd like to tell my suggestions about the 
version update from 2.3.x to 2.4.x It has been a big step forwards: 
improved performance, awesome new console implementation, and lot of 
improvements inherited from the long list of 2.3 to 2.4 Pyhon changes.

About GUI development, I use Tkinter but isn't as fast as I'd like, 
anyway it works smooth if you don't need to populate thousands and 
thousands of items in lists or suchs tasks. There is a port of wxWidgets 
for 2.3.x, but seems to have some little bug as thought did I read some 
months ago, on this mail list. Hope a 2.4 version could be possible soon!

And about Python for Linux handhelds, I really don't know much, but I 
thought the main Python distribution should work. Perhaps I'm wrong... 
could someone point towards this issue?

Thanks to Luke Dunstan and all the Python & PythonCE contributors for 
such a sucessful work.

Gonzalo Monzón.