[Pythonmac-SIG] New Page, first proposal

[Christopher Barker]

Bob Ippolito wrote:
>> Let's have py2app be a standard part of the 2.4 package. It'd be great
>> if the standard upgrade package had and did everything you need to get
>> started. I suggest easy-install as well.
> 
> I'd prefer to wait on that until it's more mature.

Why? it's what we use now, and it's the best there is. Anyone wanting to 
create stand-alones is going to need it. There's always room for it to 
be upgraded in the future.

 >Shipping setuptools  isn't a bad idea, but it's a one-liner to install 
it..

Yes, but it then puts the scripts in the weird bin directory buried in 
the Framework, and one extra step is one extra step too many.

> The extension thing we can hack around by installing two copies of the 
> Makefile and having distutils pick a PPC-only Makefile if it detects 10.3.

OK. as long as that hack is built in to the installer, that's great.

> It might be a good idea to highlight the really frequent FAQs and link 
> to their answers on the wiki.

Absolutely I think that page should largely be a bunch of links to the Wiki.

> Well we might as well just crib the script from DarwinPorts and change 
> the paths... 

Why not just add it to the PATH for all the common shells. It's not 
going to hurt me to have my .cshrc edited (or created) if I use bash, 
and then if I ever switch shells there it is.

> Since we're going to manipulating the PATH with the installer, should  
> we still bother with the symlinks in /usr/local/bin?  We definitely  
> want the Framework's bin dir on the PATH because that's where scripts  
> will be installed to... so the /usr/local/bin links seem a bit  
> redundant.  If we do this, then the Python installation process is  
> completely self-contained except for the Applications dir.

hmmm. In general, I'm not thrilled with every app creating it's own 
addition to the PATH, it reminds me of DOS pain. I really like that in 
*nix, there are only a few, standard, places for executables. Given 
that, another option is to Create a ~/.pydistutils.cfg file with:

---------------------------------------------
[easy_install]
script_dir = /usr/local/bin
---------------------------------------------

or whatever is appropriate.

That may be getting too complicated, however.

> The problem is that there are many kinds of "new users".
> 
> There are experienced programmers who understand the Mac,

> There are Python programmers coming from Windows or Linux, 

> A good entry page tries to speak usefully to all of these communities
> at the same time, without speaking down to any of them.

I think the solution is to start out with a decision tree right at the 
start:

If you are an experienced programmer who understand the Mac: <link to 
Wiki page for them>

If you  are Python programmers coming from Windows or Linux: <link to 
wiki page for them>

etc....

-Chris



-- 
Christopher Barker, Ph.D.
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