[Pythonmac-SIG] wxPackageManager prototype

[Kevin Ollivier]

Hi all,

Sorry for being quiet for a while. Had two exams and some work 
deadlines that kept me incapacitated. ;-) Since I know that geeks like 
to play with things more than look at them, I decided to post a 
prototype of wxPackageManager instead of posting another boring 
screenshot. Without further ado:

http://www.theolliviers.com/wxPackMan.tar.gz

Just unpack and double-click on wxPackageManager.app! Note that it 
requires MacPython OS X 2.3 and the latest wxPython (binary installer 
available at http://www.wxpython.org) to run. I've used this prototype 
to implement some new ideas, and I'd like to hear your thoughts. I've 
added a (non-functional) category selector and search box, and also 
implemented a "properties" box that shows various properties of the 
software that was selected. It also implements the pretty, lickable 
status buttons to show if a package is installed, in need of update, or 
not installed (or broken dependency). Note that I consider a broken 
dependency to be equated to a non-installed program; while to PackMan 
implementers they are different, the end user should not have to even 
think about dependency issues - they just want to click "Install" and 
have everything work. ;-) If PackMan tries and it can't be installed, I 
think only then PackMan should prompt the user and let them know 
there's an issue they need to resolve and give them guidance.

Oh, and I've gotten this to work on Windows (of course, there are no 
packages yet...!) by copying plistlib.py and pimp.py from 
<PythonSrc>/lib/plat-mac into the Python/lib directory. (Oh, and I 
needed to comment out the code for finding the Windows install path... 
need to fix that. =) I imagine a similar process will work for *nix. It 
doesn't look *quite* as good as the OS X version, but that is to be 
expected. ;-) Making progress...!

Oh, and one question - how hard would it be to show the PKG-INFO file 
when selecting the package? I'm thinking of putting that info in 
instead of the description textbox. Of course, if I could pull that 
info direct from PyPI... =)

Thanks,

Kevin