[Pythonmac-SIG] py2app is building semi-standalone package only.

[Ronald Oussoren]

On Wednesday, March 22, 2006, at 11:37PM, Nicholas Riley <njriley at uiuc.edu> wrote:

>On Wed, Mar 22, 2006 at 05:20:12PM -0500, Russell Finn wrote:
>> On 3/22/06, Christopher Barker <Chris.Barker at noaa.gov> wrote:
>> > 2) you mentioned a programmatic API: In fact, I think there is a plist
>> > somewhere that sets the default environment variables for all apps, you
>> > could add a PATH entry (or add to it) programmaticly easily enough.
>> 
>> Yes, it's ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist; see Apple's QA1067
>> <http://developer.apple.com/qa/qa2001/qa1067.html>.
>> 
>> Perhaps the new Python installer should set this location instead of
>> .profile (which doesn't help people using csh/tcsh)?  (Be sure to
>> include the "standard" path "/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin" as well --
>> the settings in the .plist file are *not* cumulative.)
>
>Please, no.  Editing the shell init files is bad enough (but necessary
>to support users who aren't aware of the difference between /usr and
>/usr/local); really, there should be a better way of doing this.  Even
>worse is changing the path somewhere hardly anyone knows where to
>look.

Editing shell init files actually works for *updating* the PATH, you can't
update the PATH using environment.plist, only replace it. That's very, very
bad because the user will loose his existing configuration.

BTW. Careful editing of shell files isn't too bad, anyone that really cares
about the content of those files can remove those edits and do the changes
in their own style.

>
>> > 3) PATH is only relevant to command line apps: if you've never gone back
>> > from using a GUI -- you'll never need to care about this.
>> 
>> But I would guess a number of Python-based GUI applications probably
>> use command-line utilities under the covers, which is why a global
>> setting is useful.
>
>If Mac GUI apps depend on custom environment variables or a paritcular
>PATH being set, they're broken.  They should use command-line
>utilities inside their bundles or frameworks, which py2app and friends
>make very easy to accomplish.

Any GUI that depends on the value of PATH to reach command-line tools
is broken. 

Ronald

>
>-- 
>Nicholas Riley <njriley at uiuc.edu> | <http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/njriley>
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