On Jan 13, 2008, at 6:57 PM, Steve Ellenoff wrote:
>> This is necessarily platform-specific. There is py2exe on
>> Windows,
>> py2app on OS X, and PyInstaller for Linux (although PyInstaller is
>> supposed to be able to run on all platforms).
>
> Does this wrap up truly everything your app needs as Malcom was
> asking or just your own app created code + dabo code?
Everything. The Dabo Runtime Engine is a good example of this: it
allows a Windows user to run Dabo without Python or anything else
installed. If Python is installed, the installed version is not
touched, and the runtime uses the included copy of Python.
> From a support standpoint, I know as a developer, I do not want to
> support or even try to troubleshoot problems users experience with a
> Dabo app if it turns out they have the wrong version of support
> modules like python installed, ie older versions, or newer versions
> which may have broke compatibility. I have enough trouble finding
> bugs in my own code, never mind, some bug that is possibly bubbling
> up from 3 layers of underlying libraries, thus knowing your user is
> using the exact version of the library you debugged your code in is
> essential imo.
You're describing DLL Hell, and yes, that is something to be avoided
at all costs.
> Many would say, well, it's the user responsibility to have the
> correct versions installed.. Putting that responsibility on the end
> user while fine from the developers point of view, is not at all
> realistic, unless you're dealing with highly tech-savy users. Thus,
> many developers, like myself, do everything and anything we can to
> guarantee all components are the correct version from the moment the
> app is installed.
If it is an internal app to your business, then it is easy to ensure
that everyone has the right version of whatever you need. If you are
distributing an app "into the wild", you want to do what you can to
avoid such problems.
> Despite all the great things I've seen so far from Dabo, my main
> worry it as well as other open source apps/frameworks is that they
> may not have a robust way to guarantee this kind of reliability. So
> I'm very curious to get some perspective from Ed and others with
> experience in this area.
There is a lot of code like that can depend on the available version
and bracket the code accordingly. Dabo, for instance, requires only
Python 2.3, which is about 4-5 years old. If you have a more recent
version, it can and will work with that, but 2.3 works just fine. For
example, the Decimal module was added in 2.4, which allows for exact
decimal math that is not possible with floats. If you run 2.3, then
float values are used, but if you run 2.4 or later, we'll take
advantage of the decimal calculations wherever possible.
My experience is that while it may seem daunting sometimes, it's
actually no worse than making sure that the correct version of MSXML
is installed, or the correct version of Excel/Word is installed, or
anything else that we are already used to dealing with.
-- Ed Leafe
-- http://leafe.com
-- http://dabodev.com
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