[Pyb-developer] Top level invoication questions

[<an...@re...>]

Hi Anthony and friends,

I got distracted for a couple of weeks but am now trying hard to
make Pyb work for packaging my code. Looks more and more promising.
However I keep getting this "unpythonic" feeling at the very top
level.

(1) Thread questions:
You run pyb.bat over a script, which has an
execute-on-init object at the bottom. The only work pyb.bat
does AFAICT is to start a thread and run the target module in it.
Why is the thread important?

(2) Executable scripts
Assuming I can live without a thread, why not ditch
it and just make an "executable  script" the norm?
Python scripts are always executable on windows.
If I saw a directory containing things like this,
I'd naturally think to execute them (especially
if they start with a verb)
  download_dependents.py
  build_minimal_distro.py
  build_full_distro.py


This feels like an Ant legacy.  XML files cannot be
executed so the command line tool is needed there.

If I change the bottom of the script of my scripts to

|if __name__=='__main__':
|   Project()
then it all works.

(3) avoid auto-running on import
The above change also stops scripts from executing when I
import into Pythonwin, or run one of a number of documentation
tools over my source directory.

(3) explicit run method
I would prefer to have an explicit run e.g.

|#project definition omitted
|Project(name='Demo Project', default='build', targets=targets)
|if __name__=='__main__':
|    Project.run()

This opens the possibility to load up and examine PYB
projects in analysis tools, make nice easy GUIs etc,
simply by getting hold of the Project object and inspecting
it.  Otherwise parsers are needed.

Any thoughts?

Andy Robinson