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I am a pretty recent developer..
but I have a single monitor (big enough) but it is so annoying that every now and then I first use the text editor to write the code and then go to terminal to execute and debug
I was wondering if there is any developer tools where I can like use half screen for that note pad and the other half for terminal.. so that I dont have to shuffle back and forth between the terminal and the text-editor...
Something like, when this software is running... then notepad and terminal just freezes in that half screen and when i close this software I can minimize and turn to normal mode.
If not it would be cool thing to have. :D
THanks
Use ViM in split window mode, edit your script on the left side and start ConqueTerm (use :ConqueTerm bash) on the right side. Now you can code and execute Python code in the same terminal window at the same time using a superior text editor ;-)
Disclaimer: Of course this only helps if you are familiar with ViM already.
If you're developing in Python - have a look at PyCharm. It's a clone of IntelliJ IDEA, tailored for python development, written in Java, so work on any platform. If you like it, it also doesn't cost a whole truckload.
That's for the easy and money-based way. More complex ways - you can use a text editor that allows running your scripts, upload to webservers, whatnot. It pretty much depends on the stuff you're developing.
You might want to check out Sublime Text.
When you say "terminal" do you mean a python console or a real system terminal?
If it is the first case, then most if not all python IDE I have ever used do have that functionality built in: gedit, eclipse, geany, SPE, just to mention a few.
If it is the second case, some IDE like gedit do have a plugin for that, but in general what you should probably use is another window manager (namely a tiling window manager). No idea on how the situation looks like on Microsoft / Apple OS's, but under GNU/Linux you have a plethora of different tiled window managers. Two that I tried and liked are Xmonad and Awesome.
HTH!
There are many editors... and IDE's that will allow you to run your code from directly within the editor / IDE enviroment
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the question, but it seems like the easiest way is to simply manually resize the windows and place them where you want them. Also, a handy tool in general is the Python IDLE, where you can code in the Python window and simply have it run in the shell by pressing F5.
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I am planning on creating a software that will be used to analyse biological data, some of us biologists would not have much programming skills yet we do alot of repetitive tasks and are required to write more scripts or programs that we always use using.
i have decided to narrow it down to only one very important task, its a searching script, i.e to query a database of genes-(data), there is already a program that does that called ncbi-blast, usually one needs to be familiar with command line and also requires ubuntu or windows, but its a hassle if you have to analyse the huge quantities of results generated.
so i have want to package some of my python scripts into a software so that others can find it convenient to analyse their work
Open vs. Closed Source (Licensing)
i intend to make some of the functionalities freely available to the user in the software, although at a later stage, i intend to incorpaorate pipelines that would require an affordable license
testing
so with this one function, it makes testing alot simpler-i dont know yet, and i would not mind starting with linux-ubuntu and windows as the platforms.
I appreciate your advice on choosing just one language, and i will go with python, how ever i would like tyhe software to atleast support other free programs created in other languages like R, as in plugins that a client installs when they need them.
I hope this shades more light to my already complex situation
Thank you
Sounds like you're at the beginning of an adventure and some new learning curves. I will applaud your willingness to create. Here are some things to consider as you get started on your journey.
fyi: "software" is typically a single word, no space.
Based on the context of "a soft ware" it seems like you mean "application".
I mention "software" and "application" not to give you a hard time about it, but because I think 1) it will help you in future searches when you look for ways to get something done (e.g. you'll get more useful hits on "python application installer" than "python soft ware installer", and 2) you can more clearly explain to people what you are attempting.
So. Your application(s) will need a user interface for your collection of scripts. Do you want a graphical user interface (GUI)? Or a command line interface (CLI)?
GUI: more complex than CLI:
For a GUI it will be more complex to get something that runs on both Windows & Linux.
So far as I know there isn't a trivial way to create a single GUI that runs on both Windows & Linux without adding another tool. Maybe python has easy GUI user-interface stuff in it and you could use that.
For perl I will point you here: "Perl GUI programming on Windows" Perl GUI programming on Windows
This lists some Perl approaches to consider, you will have to research them and see which ones are also able to run on Linux. Be careful about including additional libraries you'll need to package (or document how to install) with you application.
CLI: more simple than a GUI:
Since they are just scripts today, I would suggest starting with a CLI which probably means cleaning up your argument handling ( #ARGV in Perl, I can't comment on Python).
Read through your code and find literals that you change when you run a script for something new, those things will become your arguments. And if it starts to seem like you are creating too many arguments maybe you want to look into a configuration file (properties file of some kind).
It will be easier for you to get started with a CLI and you can always come back and add a GUI option in a future release. I find that designing a well thought out CLI makes it easier to focus on what is important for a GUI so it should help your eventual GUI be even better.
Packaging
Packaging your application is going to be a challenge.
Do your scripts need any libraries that aren't part of default with python & perl installs? If so you need to work out a way to supply those (e.g. include them with your distribution or include documentation that your users can follow to download and install the libs).
I can't comment on pyinstaller.
For Perl I will point you to this question on distributing a Perl Application : Distributing a Perl Application
User Skill
How much skill do you expect your users to have?
Will they be ok with installing a python and perl interpreters if necessary? Not every user has that technical skill.
Do you want to make sure your scripts verify the minimum versions of python & perl they need?
Documentation
See User Skill, above. You will need to make documentation available.
This will be driven by who is going to use your scripts. What is your target user like? Can you write a "5 line" summary that would make me want to download them and try them? That will be a helpful exercise to help you focus on how you want to present the scripts.
Open vs. Closed Source (Licensing)
This also ties into licensing. Are you aiming for a commercial product? Giving the world another gift of open source? Those are both fine things to do, but you'll want to choose a suitable license for your application. You also have some work to do if you want to avoid distributing your script's source code (I'm not suggesting you pursue one approach or the other, just that you make the decision before you put it on the internet at large).
Testing
Testing your application is going to be a challenge.
If you don't have automated tests for your scripts you will go crazy trying to verify it runs everywhere you want it to run.
Do you have unit tests & test suites for your scripts so you can verify they run correctly on different versions of Windows and various Linux distributions?
If your scripts are pretty simple maybe it doesn't matter if they're running on 32 bit vs. 64 bit operating systems.
Maybe it doesn't matter if they run on Windows 10, Windows 8.x, Windows 7.x, maybe various versions of Windows Server (2012, 2008, ...).
Maybe it doesn't matter if they run on RedHat, Suse, Ubuntu, Mint, ...
You probably want some sanity checks to verify that your install program worked correctly and the environment is suitable.
Without knowing what your scripts do it is kind of hard to say how much testing they benefit from.
Free Advice: choose just one scripting language and run with that
I will end with some completely free advice (worth what you're paying for it :-) )
Think really hard about just choosing one scripting language and writing everything in that.
You are going to have a LOT of additional complexity from supporting two scripting systems, if I were doing something like you describe I would Seriously Consider consolidating into a single language and just to Python or just do Perl. The time and energy it takes you to rewrite your Python scripts as Perl (or the other way around) may very well be easier compared to learning about creating installation guides and packaging your application using two different languages.
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Is it possible to do graphics on Linux without installing and using a full blown window manager like Gnome/KDE etc?
I am working on an embedded system with a touch screen and I just need to generate Python plots and perhaps have a few buttons to select which plots are displayed. There is no mouse or keyboard.
I do not want to use a windowing system because that would be total overkill for this project. Is there any way I can just display my plots and buttons in fixed locations on the screen and be done with it? Platform is Debian Linux.
Yes, there are libs available. Years ago I used svgalib. Games like Quake used it as well.
http://www.svgalib.org
I may be behind the times, however, so I am not sure how current this alternative is. It seems a bit out of date.
You can program w/ Xlib directly. There looks to be a python port; I've included a link to a manual for the native C library since the python docs look skimpy and that may help with some of the concepts.
In your question you've perhaps conflated the concept of window manager with windowing system. GNOME and KDE are actually desktop environments built on top of a window manager. The latter are generally much lighter weight than the former and can often be used standalone (openbox, fvwm, et. al.).
These are in turn built on top of the windowing system, which is Xorg. It is possible to do graphical stuff without that using the kernel framebuffer, which apparently is an option for pygame.
Another alternative would be to not even have X at all. You could try using SDL w/ framebuffer support - a thread regarding this approach can be found here: Using OpenGL Without X-Window System
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I am a beginner programmer and have learned most of what I know thus far from using delphi for the past couple of months. A month or so back I decided to give python a try as I was told it may be easier to learn and I really like the language. I guess I just seem to pick things up easier using it.
The only problem is that I can't seem to find a good IDE for it that works in the way that Delphi does. I want to create desktop apps with nice GUIs so it would be nice to have something similar to Delphi/Visual studio to work with.
I have searched around and could find anything. Was wondering if anyone could lend a hand.
Also, from what I have gathered Ironpython seems to be the same as python coding wise. I don't mind my apps only being able to work on windows. Is Python Tools a good option. I mean is it basically like using visual studio but with python code instead?
Any help is much appreciated.
Thanks.
Boa Constructor is a classic RAD IDE for GUI applications (wxpython, both linux and windows). People is still using it but seems that development stopped some years ago. PythonCard is another RAD IDE I used in the past but also unmaintained right now
Although they are not IDEs, some tools are very helpful for GUI design like:
- wxglade (wxpython, included as a pluging in Stani Python Editor, only python2.x)
- qtdesigner (qt-pyqt or pyside, included in pyqt. Spyder IDE, build on pyqt, has a dedicated link to it. Works also for python 3.x)
I use PyGTK to interact with GTK.
http://www.pygtk.org/docs/pygtk/gtk-class-reference.html
http://www.pygtk.org/pygtk2tutorial/
But there is also QT, and WXpython, that are worthy.
http://thekompany.com/products/blackadder/
I always liked BoaConstructor which is a wxPython GUI Builder.
Doesn't seems to be actively maintained any longer though...
wxpython is very active though...
Python Tools is basically just like using VS but with Python. It's got intellisense, debugging, profiling, etc... When working w/ IronPython the .NET debugger is a little rough (you'll see internal implementation details) but you can still use the pure Python debugger which gives you a Pythonic view.
The intellisense engine is aware of the GUI designer so you'll get completions against the controls defined in XAML. And you'll get auto-definition of handler methods when you do things like double click on buttons in the GUI designer or select to define an event handler in the properties pane. Probably the biggest missing thing is that there's no support for user controls and there's also no designer support for WinForms.
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I need to create a simple windows based GUI for a desktop application that will be downloaded by end users. The application is written in python and will be packaged as an installer or executable.
The functionality I need is simple - selecting from various lists, showing progress bars, etc. No animations, sprites, or other taxing/exotic things.
Seems there are quite a few options for Python GUI libraries (Tk, QT, wxPython, Gtk, etc). What do you recommend that:
Is easy to learn and maintain
Can be cleanly packaged using py2exe or something similar
Looks nice
[Update] For what it's worth I ended up going with tkinter. It's fairly well documented, can be made to look nice (mainly, use native fonts), and most importantly ships with Python so there's nothing extra to worry about. wxpython also looked good, but the download was 10M or so, and I didn't want to add that extra weight to the packages I distribute.
tkinter's major advantage (IMHO!) is that it comes with Python (at least on Windows). It looks ugly, and there's no progress bar or something like that (at least not builtin). Being a thin wrapper around Tk, its API doesn't feel very elegant or intuitive. However, there are quite a few good Tkinter resources on the web so learning it is not necessarily a pain.
For any serious GUI attempts, I'd go for wxPython as well. I don't know about packaging, though. But I wouldn't expect any problems.
I've recommended wxPython in the past and it's still an excellent tool. The others always seemed somewhat cumbersome to me.
There's instructions out there on the web which show exactly how to package a wxPython GUI.
The wxAui section in particular can give some really clean / usable results:
The most beautiful one that I can suggest is PyQt (almost native), otherwise a good idea would be using directly IronPython that is native .net code.
Anyway nothing beats tkinter for multi-platformness and packaging-friendliness.
I've used wxPython in the past (For Mac/Windows deployments). It has worked good. And it looks nicer than Tk :)
From using both wxPython and TKinter, I'd say wxPython looks nicer and is easy to learn.
Although you said you are planning on using the program for Windows, it's worth mentioning that I've had problems with TKinter on Mac not working correctly.
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I have a little experience developing small command-line applications with Python. I want to move on to developing GUIs with Python. From the available GUI toolkits for Python, the ones I feel the most inclined to are wxPython and Tkinter; but I don't want to code all of the GUI by myself all of the time.
Are there any good GUI IDEs for any of these toolkits? It doesn't need to be free or open source.
I will talk only about WxPython because it's the only toolkit I have experience with. TkInter is nice to write small programs (then it doesn't require a GUI Designer), but is not really appropriate for large application development.
wxFormBuilder is really good: it generates .XRC files you need to load in your program, and it can generate .py files by subclassing them when you use.
DialogBlocks and wxDesigner are two commercial software which can generate Python code directly. I didn't tested these much because of their price.
wxGlade is (I think) not yet mature enough for large programs, but it's worth a try.
After trying all these, I realized they had all flaws and that nothing is better than just writing the GUI in an editor. The problem is the extended learning curve. But then you will be much more faster and your code will be much more flexible than when using a GUI designer.
Have a look at this list of major applications written with wxPython. You will probably see that none of these use a GUI Designer, there must be a reason for this.
You then understand gs is right when saying that either you switch to PyQt or you write your application by hand. I had a look at Qt Designer in the past and thought this was what I needed. Unfortunately PyQt has some license restrictions.
This may not answer your question directly, but I chose PyQt because there were no good UI designers for wxPython.
Apparently you either write your GUIs by hand or switch to PyQt.
Because Nokia and Riverbankcomputing couldn't agree on a LGPL solution, Nokia decided to build its own bindings: PySide.
Boa Constructor has a WxPython GUI builder.
I use xrced (comes with wxPython). The GUI is defined in xml files, you have an autogenerated python file that automates some initialization then you subclass those autogenerated classes and do the rest of the initialization by hand. I find that this is a good way to blend the elegance of hand-written GUI code with ease of GUI code generation.
For the code I use WingIDE, it's helpfull to have a good debuger and good source code completion when dealing with large libraries (or frameworks if you will) like wxPython.
If you want more automation (and so, uglier code) try the latest version of Boa, there are some nice introductory screencasts for it at ShowMeDo.com
I use Eclipse with PyDev as my Python IDE (Which is probably not the best solution out there, but it is quite decent)
For GUI developement, I have used wxGlade for a mid-sized project and found it to be quite easy to use one you've grasped the concepts of WxPython. The XML generation is very useful for separating actual GUI design from program logic.
All of the these are free.
Try VisualWx. I think the GUI designer is very good; however the IDE is fairly rudimentary (no code completion, debugging, etc.). My work pattern is to have VisualWx and a good editor like Komodo Edit/Netbeans/etc. open at the same time and switch between them as needed.
I've used wxGlade for a few mission-critical apps. If you're a little weak in wx, it can be rough, but once you get used to it, its a great tool.
Not really a GUI IDE but it leds you define Tkinter GUIs in a JSON file: https://github.com/tmetsch/pytkgen