kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Miguel Angel Ajo Pelayo <miguelangel@xxxxxxx>]

2012/7/23 Dick Hollenbeck <dick@xxxxxxxxxxx>:
>> that some minimal form of Python could be included in KiCad installer.
>
>of Python could be included in KiCad installer.
>
>
> ?? Why then, not just install Linux when installing Kicad?, (you know, take the Windows
> user out of his misery once and for all.)
> Or option 2, make the misery so bad, that the he has to install Linux himself, just to
> make the pain stop, by adding a second, third, or fourth copy of Python to his system?
>
> ?? Why then, not just install Linux when installing Kicad?, (you know, take the Windows
> user out of his misery once and for all.)
> Or option 2, make the misery so bad, that the he has to install Linux himself, just to
> make the pain stop, by adding a second, third, or fourth copy of Python to his system?
>

Hahaha, good point Dick, anyway, somehow, in Win32 is a common
practice to include the python interpreter in many softwares that
depend on python, at least the DLL (see point b)

Anyway, my preferences are:

a) Ask the users to install Python 2.7.x, and set it on system PATH as
a prerequisite, if it's not satisfied during installation just give a
link to: [http://www.python.org/getit/], it's just 15MB   [apt-get
does that automatically in Linux]

b) Bundle the whole Python exe + Python.dll + python basic set of
system libraries,

c) Bundle only the Python.dll + python basic set of system libraries,

d) Statically link Python in kicad + provide the basic set of python
system libraries [a good way of wasting system memory]

--jokes--

e) forcing the users install Linux would save a lot of time, yes, but,
poor Win32 and Mac users ;)

f) Installing Linux itself [KicadOS!!!, hahaha]



I think that a is better than b,c (even though it needs more user
interaction) because the user will have all the system-wide available
python modules and libraries, and also kicad functionality will stay
available to any other python scripts on the Win32 systems.


Anyway, we might take a look to what other Win32 softwares are doing
regarding this, and think.


> Here I thought that when I run
>
>   $ ccmake .
>
> on linux, I was doing something that everyone could do, which is to specify where things
> are located.  Apparently not everyone on Windows can be expected to do this.
>

It's not easy even for a developer, since you need to download cmake,
wx, mingw gcc, etc separately by yourself. Win32 it's not fun for
developers :)

> Then, when we support Javascript and lua, we should install those in advance as part of the installer too?


For Lua you must link it to your executable (last time I used it had
no dll or dynamically loadable modules -may be I'm wrong here-), the
advantage of lua is that it's tiny (<128kB), the disadvantage is that
it doesn't have the broad base of libraries that Python does.

For Javascript (v8), we have loadable libraries, we might be in the
same case as Python.


-- 

Miguel Angel Ajo Pelayo
http://www.nbee.es
+34 636 52 25 69
skype: ajoajoajo