Distributing a Python program hell

[John Nagle]

I'm struggling with radio hams who are trying to get my
antique Teletype program running. I hate having to write
instructions like this:

Installation instructions (Windows):

Download and install Python 2.7 (32-bit) if not already installed.
(Python 2.6 or 2.7 is required; "pyserial" will not work correctly on
older versions, and "feedparser" is not supported in 3.x versions.)

Install the Python module "setuptools" from the Python Package Index.
(Needed by other installers. Has a Windows installer.)

Install the Python module "feedparser" from Google Code.
(Unpack ZiP file, run "setup.py install")

Install the Python module "pyserial" from SourceForge.
(Windows installer, but 32-bit only)

Install the Python module "pygooglevoice" from Google Code.
(Requires 7Zip to unpack the .tar.gz file. Then "setup.py install")

Download "BaudotRSS" from SourceForge. (ZIP file, put in your
chosen directory for this program.)

Run: python baudotrss.py --help

I'm thinking of switching to Go.

John Nagle

 

[Ian Kelly]

I'm struggling with radio hams who are trying to get my
antique Teletype program running. I hate having to write
instructions like this:

Installation instructions (Windows):

You should check out pyInstaller or py2exe or cx_Freeze.

 

[Neil Cerutti]

I'm struggling with radio hams who are trying to get my antique
Teletype program running. I hate having to write instructions
like this:

Installation instructions (Windows):

Download and install Python 2.7 (32-bit) if not already installed.
(Python 2.6 or 2.7 is required; "pyserial" will not work correctly on
older versions, and "feedparser" is not supported in 3.x versions.)

Install the Python module "setuptools" from the Python Package Index.
(Needed by other installers. Has a Windows installer.)

Install the Python module "feedparser" from Google Code.
(Unpack ZiP file, run "setup.py install")

Install the Python module "pyserial" from SourceForge.
(Windows installer, but 32-bit only)

Install the Python module "pygooglevoice" from Google Code.
(Requires 7Zip to unpack the .tar.gz file. Then "setup.py install")

Download "BaudotRSS" from SourceForge. (ZIP file, put in your
chosen directory for this program.)

Run: python baudotrss.py --help

I'm thinking of switching to Go.

Python programs can be distributed as binary-like packages, e.g.,
www.py2exe.org.

 

[Grant Edwards]

I'm struggling with radio hams who are trying to get my antique
Teletype program running. I hate having to write instructions
like this:

[...]

Python programs can be distributed as binary-like packages, e.g.,
www.py2exe.org.

I'd second the recommendation for for py2exe. It's been a couple
years since I used it, but for 6-7 years before that I used it
regularly to distribute about a half-dozen different wxPython apps to
Windows users, and it worked very nicely.

It sometimes requires some effort to get the configuration tweaked
right and then adjusted so the result works on a variety of Windows
versions, but in the end it always worked great.

I usually used one of the various free "self-installer generators" to
bundle up the .exe file(s) produced by py2exe along with whatever else
was needed to go with them and make them simple to install. [I've
forgotten which ones I used, but they all do basically the same
thing.]

I did all my development on Linux. When I boot over to Windows (on a
VM, generally) I had Cygwin installed and just ran a "make" to do all
the executable creation and bundling via command-line calls to py2exe
and self-installer utilities.

 

[rh]

I'm struggling with radio hams who are trying to get my
antique Teletype program running. I hate having to write
instructions like this:

Can you package it and make it available via pip?
I only know linux so maybe pip doesn't run on windows??

If you packaged via pip then they would only have to do:

pip install antique-teletype

Installation instructions (Windows):

Download and install Python 2.7 (32-bit) if not already installed.
(Python 2.6 or 2.7 is required; "pyserial" will not work correctly
on older versions, and "feedparser" is not supported in 3.x versions.)

Install the Python module "setuptools" from the Python Package
Index. (Needed by other installers. Has a Windows installer.)

Install the Python module "feedparser" from Google Code.
(Unpack ZiP file, run "setup.py install")

Install the Python module "pyserial" from SourceForge.
(Windows installer, but 32-bit only)

Install the Python module "pygooglevoice" from Google Code.
(Requires 7Zip to unpack the .tar.gz file. Then "setup.py install")

Download "BaudotRSS" from SourceForge. (ZIP file, put in your
chosen directory for this program.)

Run: python baudotrss.py --help

I'm thinking of switching to Go.

John Nagle

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