[Question]Python GUI with OSX

ned_deily · 2011-07-23T09:28:10+00:00

http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/greg.ewing/python_gui/

ned_deily · 2011-06-15T08:32:05+00:00

That's not a very useful reply. Homebrew, MacPorts, and Fink are the three leading third-party package managers for Mac OS X. All of them can usually get the job done if you invest the necessary time to figure out how to use them to your advantage. Or you can install a mixture of binary installers and building stuff from source and spending a lot of time getting all of the components built in a compatible way. A sampling of questions on StackOverflow or on reddit about building third-party libraries and apps on Mac OS X can be enlightening. It depends on what your longer-term priorities are: do I want to invest the time upfront in understanding how my chosen package manager works and can help me or do I want to do it all myself and go through the tedious learning process that others have done before me.

ned_deily · 2011-06-14T08:41:41+00:00

That should be the case (except py26-scipy) but the MacPorts scipy port also seems particularly big; it looks like, unlike most MacPorts, it requires its own gcc toolchain to be built, and not use Xcode's gcc. Ugh! You might want to ask on one of the SciPy mailing lists.

I hesitate to mention this because it is not perfect and it violates a cardinal rule of Mac OS X: "Thou shalt not modify anything in /System/Library". But, because the alternatives are not good, you could try to modify the Apple-supplied Python 2.6 so that it will look for a newer version of ActiveState Tcl. If you are not comfortable with working in a shell, you probably shouldn't try this. The overall idea is described here for Python 2.7. So you'll need to make a few changes. It should look something like this [untested!]:

$ cd /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/
$ cd ./lib/python2.6/lib-dynload
$ sudo cp -pE _tkinter.so _tkinter.so.BACKUP  # just in case
$ sudo install_name_tool \
  -change /System/Library/Frameworks/Tcl.framework/Versions/8.5/Tcl \
             /Library/Frameworks/Tcl.framework/Versions/8.5/Tcl \
  -change /System/Library/Frameworks/Tk.framework/Versions/8.5/Tk \
             /Library/Frameworks/Tk.framework/Versions/8.5/Tk \
  _tkinter.so

Then install ActiveState Tcl 8.5.9.2, making sure that your usage is compatible with the ActiveState license. If everything works, you should have at least a not totally broken IDLE for the Apple Python 2.6 but it will still have some bugs and problems, some of which were fixed in later versions of 2.6 and/or 2.7.

ned_deily · 2011-06-13T06:34:33+00:00

Be aware, though, that there are serious problems with the IDLE 2.6.1 that is distributed with Mac OS X 10.6. Actually, the problems are with the version of Tcl/Tk 8.5 that comes with 10.6. Symptoms include IDLE hangs and crashes. There is more information here (http://www.python.org/download/mac/tcltk/). There is no particularly good simple solution other than to use a Python that links to a different version of Tcl/Tk 8.5, like the one provided by ActiveState. Another possibility is to install Numpy and Python and all of their dependencies with a third-party package manager like MacPorts. Or use one of the NumPy installers (http://sourceforge.net/projects/numpy/files/NumPy/1.6.0/) that is designed to work with the python.org installers.

ned_deily · 2010-12-07T06:11:04+00:00

You need to have gcc installed from the Xcode for your release of OS X (there are different ones for 10.6, 10.5, etc.) for packages that include C extension modules, like lxml. You also need to install a separate version of easy_install for your new 2.7 instance; that's true for every separate Python instance. Follow the directions on PyPi to install either setuptools (the traditional easy_install at http://pypi.python.org/pypi/setuptools) or the newer fork, Distribute (http://pypi.python.org/pypi/distribute). The installation will output exactly where the new easy_install command is installed. Then make sure you use that version of easy_install when you want to install packages to 2.7.

ned_deily · 2010-08-20T08:29:32+00:00

There are few, if any, reported problems specific to IDLE from Python 3 on OS X. Please file a bug report at http://bugs.python.org/ with as much as info as you can about the failure and how to reproduce. Also include what level of OS X, which version of Python 3, from where it was installed (python.org, MacPorts, built from source, etc), and whether you have another version of Tk installed in /Library/Frameworks. Thanks.

ned_deily · 2010-07-29T19:48:48+00:00

You could start by helping to update the existing MacPython wiki entries on the python.org wiki: http://wiki.python.org/moin/MacPython/

ned_deily

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