On 23 May, 2013, at 19:35, Chris Barker - NOAA Federal <chris.bar...@noaa.gov> wrote:
> On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 11:49 PM, DavidWorrall <v...@avatar.com.au> wrote: > >> I've been developing in Python on Mac's since b4 OSX and I have to give a >> workshop on the other side of the world in a (networked) non-OSX university >> lab (Windows, I think). >> >> Now I know dependencies are one of python's strengths, > > no, it's not! I think dependencies are still kind of a nightmare with > Python. pip and pypi do a pretty good job with pure-python packages, > and an OK job with compiled-with-no-other-dependencies packages, but > packages that have other dependencies are a pain - python provides no > support whatsoever for that. It's unlikely that support for external dependencies will improve a lot in the near future unless someone does the work and provides a clear and usable specification, preferably with an implementation. A major problem for this is that external dependencies aren't much of a problem on Linux, most OSS C/C++ libraries are available from the repositories of the major Linux distribution (or add-on repositories). Because of this a major group of Python users doesn't notice the problem, and hence is less likely to work on a solution. IMHO the best way forward is to build a solution for OSX, and only then try to generalize that with support for Windows and Linux. BTW. There is a tool that does have decent support for external dependencies: buildout. This is used by a number of organizations, such as the Zope ecosphere, to build and deploy complex applications and buildout projects can specify the entire build, including stuff like database servers. That said, I've never used buildout in anger. I have tried to debug a py2app problem for which someone provided a buildout configuration but ended up reproducing the problem without buildout because I couldn't get a working setup with buildout (without reading the documentation). Ronald _______________________________________________ Pythonmac-SIG maillist - Pythonmac-SIG@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pythonmac-sig unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/Pythonmac-SIG
