installing wxPython on Linux and Windows

[Peter Maas]

Recently I replaced Win2k with Linux on my desktop computer. Using mostly
multi-platform software I thought this would be easy. It was not as
easy as expected getting wxPython to work. There seemed to be no SuSE RPM
so I installed from source. Here are my steps (gtk 2.4 was already
installed):

- Built wxWidgets (.configure --enable-unicode)
- Built wxPython (python setup.py install)
error: "you should use wx-config program for compilation"
- Tried wx-config with various options
- Examined (huge) error output more closely: There was a message
"Usage: wx-config [options]" right at the beginning
- Debugged setup.py: message was caused by wx-config option unicode=no
- Debugged config.py: wx-config option unicode=no was caused by UNICODE=0
- Set UNICODE=1, next build, error: compiler couldn't find stc.h
- Set BUILD_STC = 0 and some other BUILD_s as well
- I worked! started demo.py, splash screen started up and - error in
demo's Main.py 'DemoCodeEditor' object has no attribute 'editor'
- Ah, STC is for StyledTextControl! set BUILD_STC = 1 again but how can
I get styledTextControl?
- Downloaded/built scintilla, but where's the slot for scintilla.a?
- Realized that I had to build STC (wxWidgets' contribs) separately.
- Built wxPython, start demo.py - it worked FINALLY!

Took me with all tries and dead ends approx. 8 hours.

Same task on Win2k: download wxPython-setup.exe, double-click, done.
Took me approx. 1 minute. This strikes me. Why are some tasks so hard
on Linux and so easy on Windows? After all wxPython/Win and wxPython/Lin
are made by the same developers. My guess: the software deployment
infrastructure on Linux needs to be improved.

Disclaimer: I don't want to blame anyone here. wxPython is a fine
piece of software otherwise I wouldn't have tried so hard to get
it working.

--
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Maas, M+R Infosysteme, D-52070 Aachen, Tel [phone]
E-mail 'cGV0ZXIubWFhc0BtcGx1c3IuZGU=\n'.decode('base64')
-------------------------------------------------------------------

[Diez B. Roggisch]

> Same task on Win2k: download wxPython-setup.exe, double-click, done.

Took me approx. 1 minute. This strikes me. Why are some tasks so hard
on Linux and so easy on Windows? After all wxPython/Win and wxPython/Lin
are made by the same developers. My guess: the software deployment
infrastructure on Linux needs to be improved.

On debian, it

apt-get install wxPython2.5.3

So it clearly depends on you distribution. That this is unfortunate is of
course true...

I think there are several reasons for windows having easier installation:

- on unix, progams usually are linked to libraries available on the
machine, so missing dependencies make the installation fail. On windows,
the installer installs all the dependencies - and possibly overwrites
system dlls (CorelDraw 7 killed Exchange by that, back in 1998)

- there is more commercially available installers for windows - maybe
because free software developers on UNIXes are less keen to pay for such
tools, or the admins of such systems can be trusted to be more apt dealing
with configure and the like.

- the variety of hardware _and_ software unix systems run on is much
larger, so compiling is the only way to go if you don't want to support a
plethorea of binaries (and have hardware available for these). On windows,
you can compile at home and install it on the big iron at work.

All the points are of course only an explanation, no excuse - there _could_
be better installers. As I showed, in parts that's already available, e.g.
for debian which handles dependencies usually much better and is easier to
use for online updates. I think we have to wait until consistent dependency
checking and so on are established - maybe LSB helps us there.

--
Regards,

Diez B. Roggisch

[Cousin Stanley]

| On debian, it
|
| apt-get install wxPython2.5.3
|
| So it clearly depends on you distribution.
|
| That this is unfortunate is of course true...
| ....

Diez ....

The package for wxPython2.5.3 currently is available
for Debian Sid/unstable but not for Sarge/testing ....

--
Cousin Stanley
Human Being
Phoenix, Arizona

[Peter Maas]

Diez B. Roggisch schrieb:

Same task on Win2k: download wxPython-setup.exe, double-click, done.
Took me approx. 1 minute. This strikes me. Why are some tasks so hard
on Linux and so easy on Windows? After all wxPython/Win and wxPython/Lin
are made by the same developers. My guess: the software deployment
infrastructure on Linux needs to be improved.

On debian, it

apt-get install wxPython2.5.3

I have heard praises of Debian's install system but Debian is quite
conservative with latest versions. There are some packages (e.g. Python,
PostgreSQL, Subversion) where I'd like to have the latest versions.
I don't want to be too tightly bound to the update cycles of the
Linux distribution.
All the points are of course only an explanation, no excuse - there _could_
be better installers. As I showed, in parts that's already available, e.g.
for debian which handles dependencies usually much better and is easier to
use for online updates. I think we have to wait until consistent dependency
checking and so on are established - maybe LSB helps us there.

If there would be a common specification how to query and change
configuration data of the system and applications this would be
really helpful.

--
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Maas, M+R Infosysteme, D-52070 Aachen, Tel [phone]
E-mail 'cGV0ZXIubWFhc0BtcGx1c3IuZGU=\n'.decode('base64')
-------------------------------------------------------------------

[Diez B. Roggisch]

> The package for wxPython2.5.3 currently is available

for Debian Sid/unstable but not for Sarge/testing ....

Nevertheless, the point remains valid: _If_ you have proper
dependency-management, installation of packages is easy. Of course tracking
dependencies takes effort, and so unless a general scheme is adopted, no
software project will burden itself with the task of doing this. So you
have to wait for your distribution to do that for them - which may result
in not-so-latest verisons. Or even none at all....

--
Regards,

Diez B. Roggisch

[Diez B. Roggisch]

> I have heard praises of Debian's install system but Debian is quite

conservative with latest versions. There are some packages (e.g. Python,
PostgreSQL, Subversion) where I'd like to have the latest versions.
I don't want to be too tightly bound to the update cycles of the
Linux distribution.
Then you can go for debian testing or (as I do) unstable. They usually have
the latest stuff in, and for a desktop-system that doesn't need uptimes
measured in years its really good. Occasionally, some dependency matters
occur in these releases, and I have to force installation of packages. But
usually, things are smooth, and apart from a hd-crash in January, I never
had to reinstall my system for now 2-3 years. Before that, I used Suse, and
switching between releases did give me quite a few headaches - usually I
reinstalled the system, as my home was on its own partition.

However, a warning has to be voiced: Commercial distributions do a better
job on the hardware detection/integration side of linux-life. Debian can do
what can be done on linux in general, but it might require some
config-file-fiddling and the occasional kernel build. Still worth the
effort for me, though.

If there would be a common specification how to query and change
configuration data of the system and applications this would be
really helpful.

Yup. And above that, tool support for configure or the like that will
integrate this - for example, on debian nearly all libs come with an extra
dev-package you need when compiling against them. No big deal, but
compiling software yourself usually means to downtrack these packages by
making multiple configure runs, until all missing headerfiles are there.

--
Regards,

Diez B. Roggisch

[Antoon Pardon]

Op 2004-12-02, Peter Maas schreef <pe***@somewhere.com>:

Diez B. Roggisch schrieb:

Same task on Win2k: download wxPython-setup.exe, double-click, done.
Took me approx. 1 minute. This strikes me. Why are some tasks so hard
on Linux and so easy on Windows? After all wxPython/Win and wxPython/Lin
are made by the same developers. My guess: the software deployment
infrastructure on Linux needs to be improved.

On debian, it

apt-get install wxPython2.5.3

I have heard praises of Debian's install system but Debian is quite
conservative with latest versions. There are some packages (e.g. Python,
PostgreSQL, Subversion) where I'd like to have the latest versions.
I don't want to be too tightly bound to the update cycles of the
Linux distribution.

Debian has muliple distributions. Only the stable distribution is
really conservative. The PostgreSQL version in the testing distribution
is 7.4.6-4, the download page of PostgreSQL gives 7.4.6 as the latest
version. That seems to be in order.

--
Antoon Pardon

[Simon John]

I have used the Fedora2 RPM's of wxPython 2.5.3.1 successfully on SUSE
9.1 Pro, 9.2 Pro and SLES 9 (and Fedora 3 for that matter) so you don't
need to get a specific RPM for SUSE.

I even built wxPython 2.5.3.1 with Python 2.4 on Fedora 2 today, it was
not that hard - just followed http://wxpython.org/BUILD.html

I have no way to build it on Windows though, as I don't have Visual C++
7.1, for that we must wait for Robin Dunn.

[Simon John]

I have used the Fedora2 RPM's of wxPython 2.5.3.1 successfully on SUSE
9.1 Pro, 9.2 Pro and SLES 9 (and Fedora 3 for that matter) so you don't
need to get a specific RPM for SUSE.

I even built wxPython 2.5.3.1 with Python 2.4 on Fedora 2 today, it was
not that hard - just followed http://wxpython.org/BUILD.html

I have no way to build it on Windows though, as I don't have Visual C++
7.1, for that we must wait for Robin Dunn.

[Daniel Bickett]

> I have no way to build it on Windows though, as I don't have Visual C++

7.1, for that we must wait for Robin Dunn.

Would it be too difficult of a task to try getting the build working
with Dev-C++? That way those without enough incentive for purchasing
Visual C++ (in excess of $100, I believe) could build it. Forgive my
ignorance if this has already been considered ;)

Bickett

[Rob Williscroft]

Daniel Bickett wrote in news:mailman.7076.1102081193.5135.python-
li**@python.org in comp.lang.python:

I have no way to build it on Windows though, as I don't have Visual C++
7.1, for that we must wait for Robin Dunn.

Would it be too difficult of a task to try getting the build working
with Dev-C++? That way those without enough incentive for purchasing
Visual C++ (in excess of $100, I believe) could build it. Forgive my
ignorance if this has already been considered ;)

Just the tools (no IDE):

http://msdn.microsoft.com/visualc/vctoolkit2003/

Its a 33 MB download, a bit less than $100.

Rob.
--
http://www.victim-prime.dsl.pipex.com/

[Michael Hobbs]

Daniel Bickett <db******@gmail.com> wrote:

I have no way to build it on Windows though, as I don't have Visual C++
7.1, for that we must wait for Robin Dunn.

Would it be too difficult of a task to try getting the build working
with Dev-C++? That way those without enough incentive for purchasing
Visual C++ (in excess of $100, I believe) could build it. Forgive my
ignorance if this has already been considered ;)

I'm pretty sure that I once built wxPython using Cygwin. It was a
while ago, though, and I was switching back and forth between windows
and Linux very frequently; so I may just be imagining it...

- Mike

[rido dodol]

Install ubuntu linux....get wxpython with synaptic...is easy!!!
On Thu, 02 Dec 2004 10:19:12 +0100, Peter Maas <pe***@somewhere.com> wrote:

Recently I replaced Win2k with Linux on my desktop computer. Using mostly
multi-platform software I thought this would be easy. It was not as
easy as expected getting wxPython to work. There seemed to be no SuSE RPM
so I installed from source. Here are my steps (gtk 2.4 was already
installed):

- Built wxWidgets (.configure --enable-unicode)
- Built wxPython (python setup.py install)
error: "you should use wx-config program for compilation"
- Tried wx-config with various options
- Examined (huge) error output more closely: There was a message
"Usage: wx-config [options]" right at the beginning
- Debugged setup.py: message was caused by wx-config option unicode=no
- Debugged config.py: wx-config option unicode=no was caused by UNICODE=0
- Set UNICODE=1, next build, error: compiler couldn't find stc.h
- Set BUILD_STC = 0 and some other BUILD_s as well
- I worked! started demo.py, splash screen started up and - error in
demo's Main.py 'DemoCodeEditor' object has no attribute 'editor'
- Ah, STC is for StyledTextControl! set BUILD_STC = 1 again but how can
I get styledTextControl?
- Downloaded/built scintilla, but where's the slot for scintilla.a?
- Realized that I had to build STC (wxWidgets' contribs) separately.
- Built wxPython, start demo.py - it worked FINALLY!

Took me with all tries and dead ends approx. 8 hours.

Same task on Win2k: download wxPython-setup.exe, double-click, done.
Took me approx. 1 minute. This strikes me. Why are some tasks so hard
on Linux and so easy on Windows? After all wxPython/Win and wxPython/Lin
are made by the same developers. My guess: the software deployment
infrastructure on Linux needs to be improved.

Disclaimer: I don't want to blame anyone here. wxPython is a fine
piece of software otherwise I wouldn't have tried so hard to get
it working.

--
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Maas, M+R Infosysteme, D-52070 Aachen, Tel [phone]
E-mail 'cGV0ZXIubWFhc0BtcGx1c3IuZGU=\n'.decode('base64')
-------------------------------------------------------------------
--
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

[Ed Leafe]

On Dec 2, 2004, at 4:19 AM, Peter Maas wrote:

Recently I replaced Win2k with Linux on my desktop computer. Using
mostly
multi-platform software I thought this would be easy. It was not as
easy as expected getting wxPython to work. There seemed to be no SuSE
RPM
so I installed from source. Here are my steps (gtk 2.4 was already
installed):

You could have saved yourself some grief with
http://wxpython.org/builddoc.php

___/
/
__/
/
____/
Ed Leafe
http://leafe.com/
http://dabodev.com/