I completely agree with you in principle. And I personally love the command line, even on windows. But a majority of windows users are unwilling to do anything with it--including many talented programmers. Here's how it goes for many people I've known:
1. Download ez_setup.py 2. Start menu, run "cmd" 3. Type "python ez_setup.py" 4. Type "easy_install -U sympy" 5. Huh, command not found? Oh yeah, I probably have to add something to my PATH. What, though? 6. Based on a cunning google search, it seems I need to add "C:\Python25\Scripts" to my PATH. How do I do that again? Should I add it under "User Variables" or "System Variables"? At every step, we're likely to lose part of the audience, converging to 0 windows users as N goes to infinity ;-) So I do think that having an executable installer is important to many users who read about sympy on reddit and just want to try it out. If inelegant, it probably won't be much worse than what we've been doing--at worst, we can just release installers for major versions. Brian On Mon, Jun 2, 2008 at 8:24 AM, Vinzent Steinberg < [EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I think easy_install could handle all these dependencies > automatically. The user wouldn't notice any difference. I'd keep the > full tar ball. We could offer an alternative with setuptols. IMHO not > being able to use mpmath outside of sympy (or installing mpmath twice) > just sucks. Especially if there's a large sympy overhead when using > mpmath from sympy. > > A good example: TurboGears uses easy_install excessively: > http://docs.turbogears.org/1.0/Install > In my opinion, this kind of modularity is great. There could be for > example an old pyglet version for plotting. A problem are offline > installations. But for this the tarball still exists. > > Might be possible that some Windows users prefer graphical installers, > but I prefer easy_install over such things (even when using Windows). > It's possible to make an installer though (I think setuptools is able > to do so). > > Vinzent > > On Jun 2, 11:59 am, "Ondrej Certik" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Sun, Jun 1, 2008 at 8:27 PM, Brian Jorgensen > > > > > > > > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Hi, > > > > > It's been a while, but I'm the one who committed the original sin of > > > including pyglet. In general, I agree with you. The intent back then > was to > > > allow users to plot out-of-the-box, without any external dependencies. > I've > > > since come to believe that our users are generally python programmers > who > > > can handle the installation of dependencies. > > > > > On the other hand, I want to avoid the situation that used to happen > with > > > PyOpenGL on windows: you had to install specific, non-standard versions > of > > > numeric, PIL, etc (see > > >http://www.visionegg.org/install-windows-details.html). Things to think > > > about: > > > > > * How would this work for people using the windows installer? Can it > handle > > > dependencies somehow, or should pyglet be a separate download? > > > > > * Plotting hasn't been updated to use the latest versions of pyglet (we > > > depend on < 1.0, I think). If someone uses a more recent pyglet, how do > we > > > know it's going to work? We might end up getting a lot of bug reports > > > relating to version mismatch. > > > > > Regrettably, I haven't had enough time to contribute regularly, but > I've > > > been toying here and there with different ways of doing plotting. I've > been > > > thinking it might be a good idea to make a separate package > sympy-plotting, > > > sympy-extras, or similiar. We could offer two windows installers, one > with > > > plotting and one without, though it would create quite a bit of extra > work > > > for each release. > > > > Thanks for starting this discussion and sharing the ideas. My own > thoughts: > > > > * As to mpmath, it contains essential things that should imho be part > > of sympy, also it's just 8 files, no nested directories, so we just > > plain copy them to sympy and that's it. That's imho the best solution > > here and this is how it is done now. So I think mpmath is a non-issue. > > * pyglet: I think we could distribute sympy-pure.tar.gz (without > > pyglet) and sympy.tar.gz (with pyglet). Unfortunately this means more > > work for the release manager, as now he needs to test two tarballs, > > but if it's worthy, let's do it. The only real problem here is the > > sys.path hack, but that is imho only needed in python2.4, so this > > should soon become non-issue anyway, as I think in python2.5 it coud > > be fixed by relative imports and we don't need any sys.path things > > anymore. An argument could be the size of pyglet --- is there a > > problem with it? For me the size is ok. > > > > > So, is sympy an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink, batteries-included > library, > > > or a svelte library with lots of optional add-ons? > > > > Both. It should be easy enough to get the job done. Imho it needs to > > be judged on case by case basis, so for mpmath and pyglet, see my > > thoughts above. > > > > Ondrej > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sympy" 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/sympy?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
