Re: Optional BSD package is required for (useable) Python?

On May 11, 2004, at 2:47 PM, Glenn Andreas wrote:

> > How many people do you know who don't install the BSD layer? And how 
> > many of
> > those are non-geeks who couldn't easily go back and install it? You 
> > don't
> > have to worry about geeks. I can't imagine there's any OP who does a 
> > Custom
> > Install of OS X, chooses not to install BSD, and then needs Python.
>
> My point isn't so much "who here doesn't have BSD installed" so much 
> as "if you try to produce commercial software using Python".  After 
> all, "we" all have it installed, but does everybody in a consumer 
> base?  No.
>
> If you embed python, you're half OK (the framework will be there, so 
> everything can be linked when launched), but it will almost certainly 
> fail in unexpected ways when you try to use it.
>
> If you try to write something using PyObjC (or pygame, or whatever), 
> those are probably going to fail spectacularly (well, at least 
> mysteriously to the end user).
>
> As far as I'm concerned, this puts a potentially serious limitation on 
> using Python in a commerical project, since it requires adding in 
> something in an installer to check for the presence of the "optional" 
> install, and then bail out of the install if it doesn't find it, 
> requiring the user to find their original OS X install disks to 
> install an optional thing, which they many not have handy, and then 
> potentially go through an re-install the security updates, and only 
> then can they install your application.  This seems to be a very high 
> barrier for a (fortunately) small subset of your user base, but, 
> depending on the application & target market, this may be a 
> show-stopper (not to mention something that some reviewers may 
> complain about).
>
> So any idea how we can get this out of the "optional" BSD layer 
> install?  (after all, /usr/bin/perl is in the base install)

Have you looked at my "PyMacApp" shim, or the (in CVS) PyObjC Xcode 
template?  It is written EXACTLY for this reason.  An application that 
uses it, or similar means, is NOT going to fail spectacularly without 
letting the user know how or why.  You can handle this case rather 
easily, and tell the user exactly what is wrong (the BSD subsystem is 
missing) and how to install it.

-bob


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