[Pythonmac-SIG] bundle-builder suggestion

[Bob Ippolito]

On Mar 16, 2004, at 12:21 PM, Tom Pollard wrote:

>
> 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.

If it doesn't behave properly on the command line, it isn't going to be 
reasonably debuggable.

>> 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.

This is a known issue, and it's already solved.

> 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.

nor can you actually build the application against a standard OS X 10.3 
Python, if you expect any useful behavior from --standalone.

>
>> 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?

Yes and no.  The bootstrap is complete, functional, and available.  It 
is not yet integrated with bundlebuilder.

-bob