visualpython-users

[Visualpython-users] Mac installer

[Bruce S. <Bru...@nc...>]

I've updated (at long last) the Mac OSX installer page at vpython.org to 
reflect the existence of a standard Fink installer for VPython 
(pre-boost version). It's gotten MUCH easier.

You install fink, then ask to binary install visual-py23, and it 
installs all the other needed packages, including Python. The only 
slight glitch is that the Visual documentation isn't placed with the 
other Visual stuff in site-packages/visual but rather in 
sw/share/doc/visual-py23, which IDLE doesn't point to. And it appeared 
to me that this doesn't install html documentation for Python itself, 
which seems to contain only documentation in LaTeX.

Bruce Sherwood

Re: [Visualpython-users] Mac installer

[Jonathan B. <jbr...@ea...>]

On Fri, 2004-08-13 at 22:17, Bruce Sherwood wrote:
> I've updated (at long last) the Mac OSX installer page at vpython.org to 
> reflect the existence of a standard Fink installer for VPython 
> (pre-boost version). It's gotten MUCH easier.
> 
> You install fink, then ask to binary install visual-py23, and it 
> installs all the other needed packages, including Python. The only 
> slight glitch is that the Visual documentation isn't placed with the 
> other Visual stuff in site-packages/visual but rather in 
> sw/share/doc/visual-py23,

This conforms with policies that are applied Fink-wide.  IMO it is
entirely appropriate.

>  which IDLE doesn't point to. 

Perhaps Mr. Costabel would be willing to add it in the fink package's
post-install script? (see /sw/lib/python2.3/idlelib/config-main.def)

-Jonathan

Re: [Visualpython-users] Mac installer

[Martin C. <cos...@wa...>]

Jonathan Brandmeyer wrote:
[]
>>You install fink, then ask to binary install visual-py23, and it 
>>installs all the other needed packages, including Python. The only 
>>slight glitch is that the Visual documentation isn't placed with the 
>>other Visual stuff in site-packages/visual but rather in 
>>sw/share/doc/visual-py23,
> 
> 
> This conforms with policies that are applied Fink-wide.  IMO it is
> entirely appropriate.

I could, of course, make a symlink in the python site-packages 
directory, or vice-versa, but there are more serious problems with IDLE 
and documentation, see below.

>> which IDLE doesn't point to. 
> 
> 
> Perhaps Mr. Costabel would be willing to add it in the fink package's
> post-install script? (see /sw/lib/python2.3/idlelib/config-main.def)

I have started to look at this, and I have a question: Right now, the 
idle_VPython module is not being installed (contrary to what the new web 
page seems to indicate). This is the default for python-2.3 as it seems, 
because there is already an IDLE module. Would it be useful to install 
this module or is it not advisable with python-2.3? Is it too broken?

I don't know much about IDLE, and there is still a bug in Fink's python 
package that prevents IDLE to read html documentation (it thinks 
dar'win' is a kind of windows OS). This is not hard to fix, but I am not 
the maintainer of the python package. The advantage of installing 
idle_VPython would be that I could easily configure this so that it 
finds the documentation and maybe fix the bug if it is there, too, or 
other bugs.

I have also been looking at vpython-3.0 on and off, too. It is not too 
hard to translate the mkdist_osx.sh script into a Fink package 
description. What keeps me from releasing a Fink package is that it 
needs a complete gcc and boost, and I am not yet clear in my mind how 
this should be related to other Fink packages. Is it acceptable that 
building vpython would use 600 MB of disk space and take 5 hours? I was 
  thinking of splitting it and have a separate gcc package, but this 
needs some more thinking.

-- 
Martin

Re: [Visualpython-users] Mac installer

[Bruce S. <Bru...@nc...>]

We all thank Martin Costabel for his most appreciated work in providing 
a VPython installer for the Mac, which greatly simplifies the 
installation procedure.

Martin, thanks for pointing out a mistake in the vpython.org 
installation instructions, now corrected. Indeed, we now depend on the 
IDLE that comes with Python, and it is not appropriate to install the 
old IDLE for VPython.

You apparently have packaged the VPython version of the IDLE 
configuration file Libs/idlelib/config-main.def, since IDLE lists 
"Visual" on its help menu. The file contains this entry:

[HelpFiles]
1 = Visual;C:\Python23\Lib\site-packages\visual\docs\index.html

You could rebuild your visual-py23 installer to point to the /sw/share 
location of the Visual documentation in this configuration file.

That doesn't of course address the Python installation problem that 
results in IDLE not pointing to Python documentation. When I looked 
around in the Python installation, the only documentation files I found 
seemed to be in LaTeX, so it seemed that there wasn't any html for IDLE 
to point to. There does seem to be an inconsistency in the Python 
installer. Since IDLE is a part of the Python installation, it's a bug 
that the IDLE link to Python documentation seems to be broken.

Bruce Sherwood

Martin Costabel wrote:

> Jonathan Brandmeyer wrote:
> []
> 
>>> You install fink, then ask to binary install visual-py23, and it 
>>> installs all the other needed packages, including Python. The only 
>>> slight glitch is that the Visual documentation isn't placed with the 
>>> other Visual stuff in site-packages/visual but rather in 
>>> sw/share/doc/visual-py23,
>>
>>
>>
>> This conforms with policies that are applied Fink-wide.  IMO it is
>> entirely appropriate.
> 
> 
> I could, of course, make a symlink in the python site-packages 
> directory, or vice-versa, but there are more serious problems with IDLE 
> and documentation, see below.
> 
>>> which IDLE doesn't point to. 
>>
>>
>>
>> Perhaps Mr. Costabel would be willing to add it in the fink package's
>> post-install script? (see /sw/lib/python2.3/idlelib/config-main.def)
> 
> 
> I have started to look at this, and I have a question: Right now, the 
> idle_VPython module is not being installed (contrary to what the new web 
> page seems to indicate). This is the default for python-2.3 as it seems, 
> because there is already an IDLE module. Would it be useful to install 
> this module or is it not advisable with python-2.3? Is it too broken?
> 
> I don't know much about IDLE, and there is still a bug in Fink's python 
> package that prevents IDLE to read html documentation (it thinks 
> dar'win' is a kind of windows OS). This is not hard to fix, but I am not 
> the maintainer of the python package. The advantage of installing 
> idle_VPython would be that I could easily configure this so that it 
> finds the documentation and maybe fix the bug if it is there, too, or 
> other bugs.
> 
> I have also been looking at vpython-3.0 on and off, too. It is not too 
> hard to translate the mkdist_osx.sh script into a Fink package 
> description. What keeps me from releasing a Fink package is that it 
> needs a complete gcc and boost, and I am not yet clear in my mind how 
> this should be related to other Fink packages. Is it acceptable that 
> building vpython would use 600 MB of disk space and take 5 hours? I was 
>  thinking of splitting it and have a separate gcc package, but this 
> needs some more thinking.
> 

Re: [Visualpython-users] Mac installer

[Martin C. <cos...@wa...>]

Bruce Sherwood wrote:

> Martin, thanks for pointing out a mistake in the vpython.org 
> installation instructions, now corrected. Indeed, we now depend on the 
> IDLE that comes with Python, and it is not appropriate to install the 
> old IDLE for VPython.

OK, I understand this now. So I will see how to integrate this with 
python's config files. I will also talk to Fink's python maintainer when 
he comes back from his vacation :-) OTOH...
> 
> You apparently have packaged the VPython version of the IDLE 
> configuration file Libs/idlelib/config-main.def, since IDLE lists 
> "Visual" on its help menu. The file contains this entry:
> 
> [HelpFiles]
> 1 = Visual;C:\Python23\Lib\site-packages\visual\docs\index.html

Hmm, my copy of this file does not contain a Visual entry nor such a 
DOSish path. Are you sure you didn't modify this yourself?

> You could rebuild your visual-py23 installer to point to the /sw/share 
> location of the Visual documentation in this configuration file.

I'll think about something. Maybe a config-main.def that the user is 
invited to copy into ~/.idlerc.

-- 
Martin

Re: [Visualpython-users] Mac installer

[Bruce S. <Bru...@nc...>]

Martin Costabel wrote:

> Bruce Sherwood wrote:
> 
>> You apparently have packaged the VPython version of the IDLE 
>> configuration file Libs/idlelib/config-main.def, since IDLE lists 
>> "Visual" on its help menu. The file contains this entry:
>>
>> [HelpFiles]
>> 1 = Visual;C:\Python23\Lib\site-packages\visual\docs\index.html
> 
> Hmm, my copy of this file does not contain a Visual entry nor such a 
> DOSish path. Are you sure you didn't modify this yourself?
> 

I didn't think I did this, as I wiped out all of /sw and started fresh. 
Not only did I see Visual on the help menu, but IDLE was also configured 
in VPython style to start in the editor rather than the shell, and 
auto-save was specified, neither of which are the defaults that come 
with Python. Nevertheless, if your copy of the configuration file didn't 
have these features, I must have somehow installed a different 
configuration file from somewhere.

Bruce Sherwood

Re: [Visualpython-users] Mac installer

[Jonathan B. <jbr...@ea...>]

On Sun, 2004-08-15 at 14:50, Martin Costabel wrote:

> > Perhaps Mr. Costabel would be willing to add it in the fink package's
> > post-install script? (see /sw/lib/python2.3/idlelib/config-main.def)
> 
> I have started to look at this, and I have a question: Right now, the 
> idle_VPython module is not being installed (contrary to what the new web 
> page seems to indicate). This is the default for python-2.3 as it seems, 
> because there is already an IDLE module. Would it be useful to install 
> this module or is it not advisable with python-2.3? Is it too broken?

Way back in the day, VPython's original author forked idle to make
idle_VPython.  Sometime between then and now, the "idlefork" project was
created based on Mr. Sherer's work.  After enhancing IDLE further,
idlefork became the stock IDLE in Python 2.3.  Since IDLE in Python 2.3
is essentially idle_VPython + tweaks, we don't install idle_VPython on
Python 2.3+.

I'll bet that idle_VPython suffers from the win vs. darwin bug as well,
but I haven't looked.

> I don't know much about IDLE, and there is still a bug in Fink's python 
> package that prevents IDLE to read html documentation (it thinks 
> dar'win' is a kind of windows OS). This is not hard to fix, but I am not 
> the maintainer of the python package. 

Please point fink's IDLE maintainer at this:
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=900580&group_id=5470&atid=105470

It is a bug that I filed against IDLE upstream that lead to changes in
Python CVS.  I haven't tried it yet (actually, I just found out that it
was closed).


> The advantage of installing 
> idle_VPython would be that I could easily configure this so that it 
> finds the documentation and maybe fix the bug if it is there, too, or 
> other bugs.

Well, since idle_VPython isn't really maintained anymore, I wouldn't
recommend packaging it separately, but that is your choice.  If you do
decide to install idle_VPython anyway, see the options
--{en,dis}able-idle-vpython and --with-idle-vpython-dir= in configure.

> I have also been looking at vpython-3.0 on and off, too. It is not too 
> hard to translate the mkdist_osx.sh script into a Fink package 
> description. What keeps me from releasing a Fink package is that it 
> needs a complete gcc and boost, and I am not yet clear in my mind how 
> this should be related to other Fink packages. Is it acceptable that 
> building vpython would use 600 MB of disk space and take 5 hours? I was 
>   thinking of splitting it and have a separate gcc package, but this 
> needs some more thinking.

I understand.  Since 3.0's changes are mostly internal, there's no rush
to upgrade yet.  

Something to think about for the future:  VPython 4.0 will use Gtkmm 2.2
+ Gtkglextmm 1.0 on UNIX-like platforms.  I note that neither of these
are in fink right now, but both of them build out-of-the box on OS X
when the Gtk C development libs are installed from fink.  Although 4.0
will include new user-visible features, even a public alpha release is
some ways off, so no rush there, either.

-Jonathan

Re: [Visualpython-users] Mac installer

[Martin C. <cos...@wa...>]

Jonathan Brandmeyer wrote:

>>>Perhaps Mr. Costabel would be willing to add it in the fink package's
>>>post-install script? (see /sw/lib/python2.3/idlelib/config-main.def)
[]
> Please point fink's IDLE maintainer at this:
> http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=900580&group_id=5470&atid=105470
[]

There are now new versions of python23 and of visual-py23 in Fink that 
are supposed to take care of this problem. In particular, the IDLE help 
bug is patched now in the python23 package.

In visual-py23 I am now providing a small config-main.cfg file pointing 
to the vpython help files, and at the first run of vpython this is 
copied to the user's ~/.idlerc directory. This avoids fiddling with the 
main config-main.def that is managed by the python23 package.

-- 
Martin

Re: [Visualpython-users] Mac installer

[Bruce S. <Bru...@nc...>]

Many thanks!

Martin Costabel wrote:

> Jonathan Brandmeyer wrote:
>
>>>> Perhaps Mr. Costabel would be willing to add it in the fink package's
>>>> post-install script? (see /sw/lib/python2.3/idlelib/config-main.def)
>>>
> []
>
>> Please point fink's IDLE maintainer at this:
>> http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=900580&group_id=5470&atid=105470 
>>
>
> []
>
> There are now new versions of python23 and of visual-py23 in Fink that 
> are supposed to take care of this problem. In particular, the IDLE 
> help bug is patched now in the python23 package.
>
> In visual-py23 I am now providing a small config-main.cfg file 
> pointing to the vpython help files, and at the first run of vpython 
> this is copied to the user's ~/.idlerc directory. This avoids fiddling 
> with the main config-main.def that is managed by the python23 package.
>