[Pythonmac-SIG] Why Do I Explicitly Need MacPython

[Christopher Barker]

Charles Hartman wrote:
> Bob Ippolito said:
>> Users currently need some familiarity with Terminal in order to get
>> anything done with Python anyway.

> But hasn't there been real progress toward making that not true? And
>  isn't that a good thing? Can't Python be an OSX programming 
> enrivonment rather than (as well as) a Darwin one?

Exactly. Heck, for lots of packages:

$ sudo python setup.py install

works fine too, but I still think it's worth building mpkgs of those.

It seems to me that that the community on this list has shared the goal 
of making Python on OS-X as easy to use and "mac-like" as possible. 
That's why we have the repository of binary packages on pythonmac.org.

So far, it appears the easiest way to make a package easy to install for 
a mac user is to make a *.mpgk of it. In fact, I've advocated for years 
that the best way to make python accessible on all platforms if to have 
packages in a "native" format -- that means rpms on rpm based linux 
systems, MS installers for windows, and mpkgs for the Mac.

However, Apple has not provided us with a full-featured package 
management system. So we are faced with either kludging around its 
limitations, or using something else as the default way to distribute 
packages for OS-X. Right now, setuptools is really the only other option.

In fact, at this point, there is at least one important package that 
isn't available as a *.mpkg (Py2App). People need to install the Python 
package, then go find an easy-install script somewhere, install it, then 
use it to install py2app. This really isn't a huge deal, but it is too 
much for the "casual mac user" -- it took me a little poking around to 
figure out, which is way too much for anyone that is new to python and 
the whole command line thing.

Shouldn't there at least be a package for easy-install itself?

Ronald Oussoren wrote:
> I'm rather happy with setuptools, there are some cosmetic problems
> (like the header-file thingy), but the core seems pretty well thought
> out.

> This features is apparently also on the list for the 0.7 release (but
> not yet implemented).

Which reinforces that setuptools is a good option to pursue.

> I'm -0 on this. Easy-install is very convenient and I wish it were part 
> of Python 2.5 but it isn't. MacPython is at this point in time "just" 
> the official binary distribution of the python.org tree.
> 
> Growing it beyond that (that is include third party libraries and tools) 
> could be useful, but even then I'd be more inclined towards adding 
> useful GUI tools than libraries.

Which is what I'm talking about. I don't agree that "MacPython is at 
this point in time "just" the official binary distribution of the 
python.org tree". I've certainly got the impression that the goal is to 
make Python work smoothly and "natively" on the Mac. I suppose the only 
real additions are the pythonw (now called python) front end and a 
little tweaking of shell start-up scripts, but those are important.

Maybe installing setuptools by default is the thin end of the wedge, but 
I think it's critical that we do have a standard and easy way for people 
to install packages.

setuptools is still a bit of a mystery to me, but I'm still confused as 
to why it is more than trivial to make a small gui that will:

Pop up a dialog when you click on a *.egg, with a message like:

Would you like to install the python package: blah-blah-blah:
[install] [cancel]

if [install] is clicked, it would ask for the admin password, then 
install the package.

If dependencies are required, it would pop up another dialog:

The following other packages are required to install this one. Would you 
like these to be auto-downloaded for you, or would you like to download 
and install them by hand?
[auto-download] [I'll do it]

Thats it. I think setuptools provides that functionality at this point. 
Am I wrong?

Key is that there is a default way to download an egg, click on it, 
select all the defaults in a series of dialogs, and get your package 
installed.

-Chris

-- 
Christopher Barker, Ph.D.
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