Re: [pygame] Introducing Pygame Launcher alpha

[Atul Varma <varmaa@gmail.com>]

On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 17:05:46 +0200, Jack Nutting <jn_list@rebisoft.com> wrote:
> 
> On Oct 25, 2004, at 1:08 PM, Sami Hangaslammi wrote:
> 
> > Of course, having separate add-ons takes away some of the simplicity
> > advantage of the launcher, but if the number of add-ons stays small
> > and they are only utilized by a handful of games (while the majority
> > runs with the base launcher), I think they are worth it. Of course,
> > the beta and final versions will have an all-in-one package available
> > too, for those users who don't mind the download size.
> 
> A nice future feature could be that the launcher would detect
> dependencies such as wxPython or twisted (maybe these could be
> specified in a standard location within the pyg file?) and would offer
> the user the opportunity to automatically download the add-on if a game
> needs it.

This is starting to sound like a broad way for "ordinary" computer
users to run *any* python application without having to manually
download Python or any other libraries.  This way, Pygame could be
"just another" library in the system, like wxPython and twisted and
any other libraries, which means the initial download of Sami's
"end-user Python setup" package would be very small and additional
libraries would transparently be downloaded as the end-user's
applications needed them.

This would be particularly useful for me because I often create small
applications--games or otherwise--that use different libraries, and I
wish I could distribute them to some end-users without requiring them
to download a massive multi-megabyte py2exe'd file or go through the
trouble of downloading and installing Python, wxPython, pygame, or
whatever other libraries I had to use for the application.

In a sense, this would be a lot like a Linux package management tool
for Python applications; one of the few things I find Linux to be
unarguably more convenient than Windows for is the fact that I can
just type 'emerge somePygameGame' in my Gentoo Linux setup and
automatically have Python, Pygame, the Pygame game, and anything else
I need automatically installed, so that all I have to do after that is
type 'somePygameGame' and I'm playing it.

Such a transparent framework for Python packages and applications
under Windows would be extremely useful, although I could be jumping
the gun here.

In any case, Sami, I like your idea, and I hope it works out well.

- Atul