[Pythonmac-SIG] BuildApplet in next distro of MacPython?

[Kevin Walzer]

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I'm curious about whether BuildApplet and PythonIDE will be included in
the next iteration of MacPython, or whether these will be replaced by
py2app and PyOxide. Although I know these are old technologies,
especially BuildApplet, I'd like to request that they be retained, even
if they're not updated or enhanced.

The reason I'm asking is that I make extensive use of BuildApplet in the
packages I maintain. I've had inconsistent luck with BundleBuilder,
py2app, and py2applet--mostly bad luck.

The nice thing about BuildApplet that it is, in fact, very simple, even
dumb, in creating applications: it saves the script in question, that's
it. It then becomes a simple matter to add the additional scripts that
come with an application to the app bundle in the appropriate directory,
to edit the info.plist file, to change the icon, etc.

In short, I have control over almost the entire process of packaging.
And I've documented this process pretty thoroughly at my website.

I realize there are tradeoffs with this approach. Apps I bundle with
BuildApplet don't have their external dependencies included (wxPython,
PyQt, whatever). But if those external dependencies are installed on the
~ user machine, then the BuildApplet process works flawlessly.

py2app is a lot more elegant and smarter in what it does in terms of
packaging, but it's also more complex. That is, if there's an error,
it's very hard--at least for me--to debug. The build process dies. I
tested this yesterday with both py2app and py2applet with Eric3, an
application I have successfully with BuildApplet. With both py2app and
py2applet, something didn't get included, even though Bob has now added
PyQt support to py2app. Neither he nor I could figure out what the
problem was. The result was that the bundle created with py2app crashed,
while py2applet just died during the build process.

This isn't a complaint about py2app: I've tested it with simpler
applications and it works beautifully. By all means, it should be the
featured method for packaging apps in MacPython. But if BuildApplet and
PythonIDE can be retained, even if it's deprecated, that would be
enormously helpful to me.

A workable alternative would be if Glenn Andreas continued to include
support for BuildApplet in PyOxide. Glenn, is this possible?


Cheers,

Kevin Walzer, PhD
WordTech Software--Open Source Applications and Packages for OS X
http://www.wordtech-software.com
http://www.smallbizmac.com
http://www.kevin-walzer.com
mailto:sw at wordtech-software.com
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