[GRASS-dev] Handling of Python scripts on MS Windows

[Jürgen E. Fischer]

Hi Helmut,

On Thu, 10. Apr 2014 at 14:34:04 -0700, Helmut Kudrnovsky wrote:
> although the architecture may differ, we may get some inspiration for python
> windows handling from other GIS projects like QGIS? 
> 
> in QGIS python is also in heavy use, e.g. QGIS processing framework, python
> addons, integrated python shell, etc. AFAIK they're bundling python in their
> standalone winQGIS ...

Not sure if I want to participate in this thread.

I think a system installation of python is uncommon.  You'd have to deal with a
variety of possibilities (python.org, ESRI, ...), you would need to make sure
all extensions you need are available for each of them - and have them play
nice with the rest of your install.

Shipping you own python with all the extensions you need, probably saves a lot
of headaches and lifetime.   That's the approach OSGeo4W (and in turn QGIS)
takes.  I wouldn't require a system wide python install or try to use an
existing one.

You could establish (or modify a pre-existing) file association to python files
that is tied to an environment variable.   And thereby make the association use
GRASS' python within GRASS and the system-wide installation otherwise.  And
thereby avoid having special treatment for .py scripts in GRASS itself (see
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5583024/temporary-file-association-for-single-cmd-exe-session)

That way you could use the stock sources and wouldn't have to use patches when
packaging (which would have been my pragmatic approach to solve the issue at
hand without risking that someone pulls a Glynn on it ;)).


Jürgen

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