On Wed, Apr 9, 2008 at 4:35 PM, Cliff Wells <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > On Wed, 2008-04-09 at 12:25 -0700, Mike Orr wrote: > > On Wed, Apr 9, 2008 at 11:24 AM, Cliff Wells <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > > > > > On Wed, 2008-04-09 at 08:50 -0700, Mike Orr wrote: > > > > > > > The problem with C libraries is a lot bigger than just Google. It > > > > frustrates users on Windows and Macintosh to no end, and many of them > > > > give up trying to install Pylons/lxml/ToscaWidgets/wxPython and go on > > > > to something else. Precompiled binaries don't always exist, are too > > > > old, hard to find, or built with the wrong C compiler or Unicode > > > > width. > > > > > > > > > > I think this is less true that it used to be. Microsoft now makes a > > > free version of Visual Studio available which is sufficient to compile > > > Python extensions on Windows: > > > > > > http://www.microsoft.com/express/download/ > > > > But is every Pylons user willing to/smart enough to/allowed to install > > and run the compiler? > > I'd think that if they were allowed to install Python (which also > doesn't ship with Windows), they'd be allowed to install some Microsoft > tools. Granted, some places might have policy issues with this, but I'm > unconvinced that it's Pylons' place to work around specific policy > issues (especially ones that we can only speculate about). > > As far as "smart enough", well... don't get me started. Anything that > raises the bar enough to slow the expansion of crappy, insecure > applications on the web is a +1 from me ;-) > > > > More to the point, it's pretty far from what > > they wanted to do in the first place, which is to write a web > > application. If Pylons doesn't do it conveniently, they'll go to > > something else. Arguing whether it's Microsoft's fault or not doesn't > > change the situation. One can say we don't care about those users, > > but I don't think Pylons wants to do that. > > Pylons is not TurboGears. It's clearly geared toward the DYI type. > I can think of several things that are far more basic to web development > and far more difficult in Pylons than compiling a C extension: > authentication and authorization, managing your database connection, > etc. 0.9.7 will even make using a template engine a bit less > "automatic".
Troubleshooting 'make' errors and installing C libraries that depend on other C libraries that have inadequate or nonexistent install instructions [1] is a far different skill set from designing a web app, understanding Python code and HTTP, and performing a security audit. The user wants to do the latter, has the skills for the latter, but may not be a sysadmin or C programmer. We have never targeted Pylons only to C gurus, but to people who know Python or are willing to learn it. Also, now that TurboGears is built on top of Pylons, any Pylons problem is a TurboGears problem. [1] This happened to me a while ago with several Python chart-drawing libraries. Out of four I tried, I could only get one working. One depended on a C library that depended on another C library, and their build instructions were laughable. -- Mike Orr <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "pylons-discuss" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/pylons-discuss?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
