Re: [pygame] Introducing Pygame Launcher alpha

[Sami Hangaslammi <sami.hangaslammi@gmail.com>]

On Fri, 22 Oct 2004 02:43:04 -0400, Bob Ippolito <bob@redivi.com> wrote:

> - The user saves some disk space and bandwidth *if and only if* Pygame
> Launcher is popular amongst developers.  Otherwise you're just making
> the user download two things (the launcher and your pyg) instead of
> just getting your application.

I agree. The launcher has to be adopted by several developers to be
really useful. But even if only a few developers use it, I think it
still makes updating your application and downloading those updates
more convenient.
 
> - A single pyg might work correctly across several platforms.  You only
> need to offer one download link and it will support any platform that
> Pygame Launcher supports.  However, in my experience, in order for the
> application to be well liked you'll still need to make some
> platform-specific accommodations.

Sure, you still have to take into account the platform differences in
UI etc. But I consider it a pretty big plus that I wouldn't have to
make three separate stand-alone packages with pyexe, py2app and ..what
ever Linux uses. Does py2app, for example, run on other platforms, or
would have to have someone else create the .app for me?

> .. but it does have a bunch of downsides, for developers anyway.  The
> largest of which being that the platform is inflexible.  You're stuck
> with a subset of the standard library and specific versions of a couple
> useful packages.  Anything other than that must be done in pure Python.

Extensions cannot be included in the .pyg file, because Python doesn't
support loading .pyd and .dll files from archives (they could be
extracted to a temporary folder each time the pyg is run, but that's
messy). However, if you don't mind distributing several files instead
of one .pyg file, the launcher could trivially support loading .pyd
files that are distributed alongside the .pyg.
 
> In any case, if a bunch of developers decide on using this, I'll make
> sure it works correctly on the Mac.. but it's not something I have a
> real use for myself... but then again, I've been working very recently
> on similar problems from the other end (making smarter packaging
> tools).

Thanks. I really appreciate the feedback and as I said in the first
mail, the whole idea is stilll pretty new and raw. I hope to get
enough people interested in developing the idea further so that it
could turn into a tool that is genuinely useful to most pygame
developers.

-- 
Sami Hangaslammi