Movable Python: The Portable Python Distribution
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Movable Python DistributionsWhat's In the Box? Introduction This page describes the Movable Python distributions. Which one should you buy, and what comes in the box ? Which Distribution ?The decision as to which distribution you want depends entirely on which version of Python you want to use. All the distributions are available for download from the Movable Python Shop. The diffferent distributions currently available are :
If new versions of Python are released then Movable Python will be updated appropriately. If you purchase Python 2.4.4, then you will be entitled to all upgrades within the Python 2.4 series for one year. In addition Movable Python itself may be upgraded. The current version number is 2.0.0. There is a demo version available from the Movable Python Shop. This is the complete disitrbution for Python 2.3.5, with the following restrictions :
There is also a portable version of IDLE, called Movable IDLE available for free download. This is built with Python 2.4.3 and comes with the full Python standard library, but lacks a lot of the features of Movable Python. What Comes in the BoxEach distribution is supplied as a single zipfile. Each zipfile contains a single directory (movpy-version) with the following subdirectories :
A normal distribution is quite big (around 60 megabytes). This is because of all the extra libraries and tools that come with it. You can drastically reduce this size by removing the ones you don't need. See Customising Movable Python for details on how to do this. docsThis contains the text source files for Movable Python. These are intended to be rendered using rest2web. In addition to the document source files it contains :
docs_htmlThe Movable Python documentation in HTML format. This directory also contains all the images and CSS stylesheet needed. licensesThese are the licenses for the Python libraries and tools that come with Movable Python. The Movable Python license is part of the documentation. manualsDocumentation and manuals for some of the Python libraries and tools that come with Movable Python. movpyThis is the distribution itself. It contains the executables movpy.exe and movpyw.exe, as well as several dlls. movpyw.exe runs programs without the dos console box. The lib directory is where the Special Files are located. These allow you to customize the behaviour of Movable Python. Firedrop2 ExtrasThis contains extra files used by the macros in Firedrop2. These don't go in the main Firedrop2 directory. You should follow the instructions in the documentation on how to use them. The documentation is included in the manuals folder. Distribution ContentsEvery Movable Python distribution comes with the full standard library.
This means that it is capable of running any code that normal Python can. For
an example of a large and complex program that runs under Movable Python,
see SPE the Python editor. A Movable Python User also reports running Zope 3.2 with Movable Python. Also included are several additional libraries and tools. Below is the list of packages and versions that are currently included: Note For compatibility reasons it is not always possible to include all the packages (or the latest versions) in the Python 2.2 distributions. The list below notes any differences. Python 2.5Several of the third party extensions included in Movable Python (like ctypes) are now a standard part of Python. For obvious reasons they're not included separately. To see all the new extensions in Python 2.5, see New, Improved, and Removed Modules. Python 2.4Python 2.4 come with the following tools and libraries :
IDLE, the Python editor in the standard library, is also included and works. This uses the version of TKinter/Tcl that usually comes with that version of Python. Python 2.3
Python 2.2The Python 2.2 distributions don't include IPython/readline/ctypes as IPython can't be made to work properly with python 2.2 (IPython requires a version of ctypes that isn't available for Python 2.2). The last version of wxPython available for Python 2.2 is 2.5.3.1. In addition, error reporting from python 2.2 is less good. This affects the exec command we use to run scripts. It means that you may not get told which file the error was raised in. Some of the other libraries may not be fully compatible with Python 2.2. These will either be removed or revert to earlier versions if unsolvable problems are discovered. Listed here are extensions which are different from the versions for the Python 2.4/2.3 distributions :
Special FilesAs well as the program files, Movable Python has several files that control its behaviour. You can control most of these through the GUI, but you can also edit some of these by hand. These are located in the lib directory. Particularly, you might want to add paths to syspaths.pth (to add paths to sys.path) or edit customize.py to customise the environment programs run in. See Special Files for details. Custom DistributionsIf you would like a custom build of Movable Python, contact me. Possible reasons for wanting a custom build include :
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