Re: [Visualpython-users] History and Status?

[Arthur <ajs...@op...>]

[Bruce]

> Excellent, Arthur! Many thanks for volunteering to work on these issues.
The
> excessive use of "I" and "me" in some of my postings was due to the fact
> that no one had previously offered to contribute to the task of building
> installers, whether to their liking and needs or to my liking and needs.
And
> I felt defensive of the needs of my students because I had seen little
> understanding in the Python community that not every potential user of
> Python, even Linux users if they are new to Linux, is comfortable with the
> following incomprehensible statement from the download page at the Python
> site: "All others should download Python-2.3a1.tgz, the source tarball,
and
> do the usual "gunzip; tar; ./configure; make" dance."

You have every right to be defensive as to the needs of your constituency -
and I would expect you to be.  And as it happends, the folks I am trying to
reach are not vastly different.  We agree, for example, as to the need of
Window self- installing executables as an essential alternative.

It seems to me, though, that with a little coordination - the needs of a
broader community can be served without sacrificing anything significant as
to the needs of any sub-community.

The other possiblity - it seems to me - is that if you are looking for a
"stand-alone" VPython distribution, you perhaps need to consider actually
going one step further than you have already - and have your distribution
not only include VPython and Numeric, but the core of the Python files that
VPython requires to run.  In that scenario you are much more free as to what
and how you place the files, help, icons, whatever, etc.  The licenses of
all these efforts would, I believe, allow you a lot of flexibility in doing
this.

It is only when VPython is offered as an add-on - which is how I view
VPython when wearing its "third party module" hat - that I think conformity
to expectations that it will tread lightly and politely on an existing
Python installations, need to be met.

The present distribution is neither fish nor foul, in this respect.  Which
is why I perceive there to be a problem.

But it is a problem, I am confident, with a good solution or two, if we work
at it.

> I'd also love to see a consensus on improved placement of the files. I'm
> quite certain that I made wrong choices, especially in the Linux case,
> partly out of ignorance and partly because there has been something of a
> moving target in the last few years about community expectations of where
> various pieces should go.

I agree 100% that community expectations have evolved, and are not today
what they were say when VPython was first released.  And that this accounts
in part for the problem.  But I do think certain things are clear. Like
using site-packages for the visual "library" files.  What is less clear -
and where there seems to be more divergence in practice - is in the
placement of demo and documentation files.

It seems to me that these, in the end, should be totally off the python
directory tree.  I guess the way I would think of it, in a typical Windows
distribution analogy, is that the install of the functonal dlls (and related
.py files) that no one is expected to access directly (we are only
interested in their functionality) is placed ujnder c:/Windows (analogous
here to the Lib\site-packages under Python directory) and the "program
files" - here the demos, docs, and maybe a customized IDE - under the
c:\Program Files directory (which might simply be a c:\Program Files\VPython
direcotry, or a c:\VPython directory.

That's my preference.

>
> As you work with installer schemes, perhaps you could treat the needs of
my
> students as a kind of superset of your needs. That is, there could be two
> distutil schemes that differ only in that one of them has some extra stuff
> added to make a single bundle.

Not an issue.  But the truth is, we are not so much serving different
audiences, as we have different attitudes, philosophies about these kinds of
things.  I don't see it as a big deal to ask someone to click on a link to a
Numeric self.executing installation file, as a separate step in getting up
and running.

The mechanics are no different then the Python or VPython installation
process as it is currently.  Just an extra click or two.  And I think
cleaner. It defies logic that your students can successfully install 2
packages, but not 3.  I would again encourage you to think of it in all or
nothing terms.  Either provide a single download solution that includes the
needed Python files - which will allow you lots of freedoms - or resign
yourself to adjust to the standard practice of having separate and distinct
distributions treated as such.

But I am open to other ideas.

Art