[Pythonmac-SIG] bundle-builder suggestion

[Tom Pollard]

On Mar 16, 2004, at 2:54 AM, Just van Rossum wrote:
> Tom Pollard wrote:
>> So, I wanted to ask whether there was any reason not to modify
>> bundlebuilder.py to generate a shell script as the bootstrap script?
>> Without that, it doesn't seem like --standalone scripts are truly
>> standalone.
>
> Earlier versions did just that. However, we found no shell substitute
> for the _exact_ behavior of execve(), and we couldn't get apps to 
> behave
> exactly like a "regular" app both from the Finder _and_ the command
> line.

I'm curious why you would care how a bundled app behaves from the 
command line.  Isn't the point of bundling a script just to make it 
usable as a normal double-clickable app from the Finder?  I didn't 
think app bundles were supposed to be usable as ordinary unix 
command-line apps.


> On top of that, there was not enough ("None") incentive to support
> 10.1, and since both 10.2 and 10.3 ship with Python, there's no reason
> not to use Python for bootstrapping.

Yes, MacOS X ships offer Python as part of the standard install, but 
it's provided through the BSD package, which is an optional install.  I 
don't think there's any hint that someone who didn't want to use the 
Terminal would need to install the BSD package.
Anyway, the issue isn't 10.1 here, but that a working /usr/bin/python 
is required for bundlebuilder-built apps to work, and that's not a 
given even for 10.2 and 10.3 systems.

My feeling is that if you're going to assume the user has a standard 
MacOS X python 2.3 installation, you wouldn't need to be making a 
"standalone" app, anyway.  If you want a truly standalone app, you 
can't use a python bootstrap script.


> The whole issue becomes less and less interesting, now Bob has written 
> a generic/reusable app executable
> in C, avoiding the need for a bootstrap script altogether.

That's certainly true.  Is this available now?  Can we use it in place 
of the standard 2.3 bundlebuilder.py on 10.3 systems?


Thanks,

Tom