Re: [Pyobjc-dev] buildapplication strawman

[Just v. R. <ju...@le...>]

Jack Jansen wrote:

> Mac/script/buildappbundle.py

Ok, I've had a closer look at it: great! Mind if I take a hack at it? I would
like to move it to Mac/Lib/ though. It it used much? Would people likely get
upset if I change the (function) interface?

A few comments.

- I would not let people specify a nib by path, but by name, defaulting to
  "MainMenu". The .lproj or individual nibs should then be listed as a
  resource.

- I don't care much for the command line interface: I think people should just
  write a setup.py-like script. I wouldn't rip main() out, but I wouldn't want 
  to spend much time on it.

- I think it's good if it (by default) would build the app in a build/ subdir,
  like distutils and PB.

Further things I'd like to do:

- Change it to use the os.execve() trick.

- I would like to add a debug or "developer" option: instead of copying the
  files/folders it would put symlinks inside the bundle. That way it's easy
  to keep on hacking on any file without having to rebuild the app all the time.

- Add modulefinder support, like we discussed by telepathy... The full version
  would also copy the Python executable to Contents/Resources/. Not sure what
  to do about a Framework python, though. Not sure I even care about that
  anymore: it only seems to make thing harder here. What do you think?

- A strip binaries option. Hm, evil? Could save a huge amount of disk space,
  though.

Question: is it possible to completely override sys.path for a statically built
Unix Python? $PYTHONPATH merely prepends sys.path. Would be nice to completely
control it for a standalone app bundle.

Speaking of sys.path: why does the objc module muck with it? Can't we solve this
some other way? I really dislike imports with such side effects. (It has already
confused me to no end: modules that I knew were in the current directory
couldn't be found after "import objc"...) An option would be for the os.execve()
wrapper to add Contents/Resources/ to the path through $PYTHONPATH.

Just