On 02/01/2017 01:05 AM, Steve - Gadget Barnes wrote:
On 01/02/2017 04:25, Jonathan Hartley wrote:
Thanks all.
Hansel - Thank you, that makes sense. I actually already do a mini
version of that at the place I'm leaving, but devs are only using
Linux/Mac host machines, and we only a Linux VM. It's reassuring to hear
that sort of setup is still feasible when extended to Windows hosts, and
Windows VMs too.
I'm tempted to reduce the number of dev configurations we need to
maintain by just holding my nose and using a Windows laptop, same as
everyone else, with a Linux VM on it. That way, I can easily replicate
my setup on any other dev's machine if they want to get involved in the
Python. Would get us up and running quicker, rather than figuring out
every combo of host and VM OS. But maybe expand into doing the full
monty you describe if there's ever more than just me who would like to
work from Linux (or if I get sick of working in a VM the whole time)
Jonathan
Jonathan,
Have you considered that python is extremely cross platform. Provided
you are careful in the areas of:
- Paths
- Direct hardware interfaces
- Shell operations
- Maintaining your requires.txt file(s)
- A tiny number of libraries that are not (easily) available for
Windows, (maybe it is worth having a blacklist). On that front Christoph
Gohlke has http://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/ which can save
many hours of fun. Note that the introduction of the wheel library
format has made things a lot simpler.
You should be able to develop & test python code on Linux (where you are
comfortable) including writing test suites - fire up a Windows VM with
python installed, (complete with populating you library from
requires.txt) & run your test suite. Then, assuming the tests all pass,
either deploy to Windows machines with python already installed as a
prerequisite or while you are in your VM use py2exe/pyinstaller or
cxfreeze to produce a Windows deployment for machines that don't have
python installed. If you stick to good, cross platform, programming
standards you should find it a breeze - pylint is your friend on this.
Just as an example I had been developing a suite of (wx)Python based
programs/utilities at work for quite a few years under Windows 7 and
deploying it. as executables, to machines running XP though 10. When the
whole lot was at about 80k lines I had an opportunity to try it for the
first time on a Linux box - I had to change 3 lines of code to get it
working. Of course this was helped by the fact that I was testing both
as source and as bundled executable.
Many people swear by Anaconda for simplifying this sort of stuff you may
wish to consider going that way personally I stick with pip and
sometimes, rarely, have to re-think which library I am going to have to use.
Of course deploying a docker using vagrant does give you a lot more
control and Linux dockers with python & your libraries installed can be
quite light weight.
Hey Steve, Thanks for the detailed thoughts.
My situation is a web application deployed to AWS, so I'm able to
control the installed Python and other dependencies on the servers, so I
won't need py2exe et al. In that situation, I agree that pip is even
more appropriate than Anaconda.
It's great to hear that Python running on Windows is continuing to
flourish, and you reassure me that's a healthy option. But to be honest,
I'm more concerned about lacking the Linux system calls, ecosystem of
services (e.g. supervisor) and philosophy that I'm used to. Clearly
there are Windows equivalents of the tools I like, but figuring them out
would be an extra burden, and I'd rather min/max my future skillset
rather than knowing a little bit about each.
I very much hope that containers will be part of our strategy, as
outlined by Hansel earlier. I only just learned that Windows containers
are also now a thing! I had no idea. (They only run on Windows hosts,
which is fair.)
Many thanks for the inputs, people.
Jonathan
--
Jonathan Hartley tart...@tartley.com http://tartley.com
Made out of meat. +1 507-513-1101 twitter/skype: tartley
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