[PyKDE] SIP and PyQT on Windoze

[Phil Thompson]

bacon at aerodyne.com wrote:
> 
> I am investigating various libraries and utilities for building a cross
> platform GUI front end to a complex engineering code.  The front end
> would have very limited distribution due to the nature of the
> underlying code it will control.  Few people have a need to investigate
> the questions being answered by our research codes.   Because of this,
> there is a small user base and relatively little support money
> available.  This leads to a number of restrictions on the technologies
> to be used.
> 
> 1) Must support Unix, should support Windows95/98/NT
> 2) Limited customer base (25-50 users) means it must be low cost
> 3) Due to the problem of orphaned toolkits, source code must be
>    available and actively developed without undergoing capricious API
>    changes.  I can't afford to rework two months of work because
>    someone else thought of new and different way to implement something.
> 
> I had initially decided to use Qt as my solution.  Now comes the more
> relevant part for this mailing list.  In discussions with other members
> of the user community, it seems that extensibility would be a highly
> valued feature.  I would like to use Python as my extension language of
> choice, but it needs to be able to access whatever GUI toolkit is used.
> 
> Does PyQt run on Windows?  What are the long term survivability
> prospects of PyQt?  As new versions of Qt are made available, how
> quickly are new releases of PyQt made?

Either PyQt will probably run on Windows with little or no changes.
Various people have told me what changes needed to be made to get over
the major problems - but I don't have a Windows development environment
so I can't test each release, I just have to hope I haven't broken
anything. I've said this before, but I'll say it again, if some kind
person and/or company will donate the necessary software licenses and a
hard disk to store them on then I'll make sure a Windows version is
supported as well as the Unix version.

The availability of new versions depends on what has been added to Qt
and, in particular, is Qt making use of some new C++ feature. Note that
you would only need a new PyQt to take advantage of any new classes or
methods in the new Qt - within the same major versions, older PyQts will
work with newer Qts just by re-compiling.

> I selected Qt because of its wide user base.  We've already been burned
> once when a commercial software vendor abandoned the GUI toolkit we used
> to develop a product.  Four man years of work were flushed down the
> toilet by that fiasco.  I don't want it to happen again.  I feel
> confident that Qt and Python will each remain viable, but I'm not as
> confident in SIP and PyQt.

Well, you've always got the source available if I get bored or hit by a
bus. I now make a living developing open source software, but I don't
get any financial support for PyQt/PyKDE so they are bound to be lower
on my list of priorities than the other work. I'll leave all those
millionaires out there to come up with possible solutions to this :)

Phil