Daniel Berlinger: While I haven’t tried to install Python under OS X, I haven’t found the installation of tools like this pleasant in the past. … [What] is the Python IDE that you can recommend for OS X?
Try Jack’s MacPython page, from which you can download a standard Mac installer that will install the complete latest Python distribution and a graphical IDE. It’s a Carbon application, so it works under Mac OS X or classic Mac OS.
Mac OS X users who want to use Python from the command line should download the non-graphical version instead, which includes absolutely every major third-party Python library and extension you could possibly ask for. In a perfect world, the graphical and non-graphical distributions would be merged, but they’re not, so if you want both you’ll have to download and install both. (They co-exist peacefully.)
Bill Bumgarner reminded me via email that Mac OS X users who really like to live on the bleeding edge can install Fink, a comprehensive library of open source software ported to OS X. Once installed, it has Debian-like package management, so you can type fink install python and it will go root out all the dependencies and download and install everything for you. Fink is not for the faint of heart, nor is it in any way Mac-like, but it has its own internal consistency. You have been warned.
Windows and UNIX users should look on Python.org. Python comes as a standard Windows installer on Windows, a standard Mac installer on Mac OS, and standard RPMs on Linux. Debian users can just type apt-get install python to install Python 2.1, or apt-get install python2.2 for 2.2. (Thanks, Beat.) And there’s standard C source code for everyone else.
PyGoogle comes with a standard Python install script that installs the software and all required third-party packages. To use it, go to the directory where you uncompressed PyGoogle and type python setup.py install. Or you could just read the README and learn how to do it yourself by copying two files. All required third-party packages are included; there is no other software to download.
These instructions may seem complicated, but that’s only because Python runs on so many different platforms, and it tries to conform to the standard distribution mechanisms of each platform. These standards may suck (for instance, RPMs are bad at dependency management), but they are the standards, so people will expect your software to conform to them and complain to you if you try anything different. People will spend more time installing other people’s software than they will installing yours. (This same principle governs web sites and user interfaces, too.)
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© 2001–present Mark Pilgrim