[PyQt] Request for a binary Mac installer

[William Kyngesburye]

On May 7, 2010, at 10:56 AM, Jan Haag wrote:

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> On 5/7/10 5:39 PM, Edward K. Ream wrote:

>> Thanks for this offer.
>> 
>> Is there any chance that you could work with the Qt people to create a
>> single-click installer?  I was only able to build Qt on the mac after
>> several hours of futzing around.  There is no way I could automate
>> that process--it's way out of my area of expertise.
>> 
>> Edward
>> _______________________________________________
>> PyQt mailing list    PyQt at riverbankcomputing.com
>> http://www.riverbankcomputing.com/mailman/listinfo/pyqt
> 
> I've never worked with this myself, but Mac Installer.app does a fairly
> good job at installing multiple packages at once through meta-packages
> (.mpkg), which basically install all packages they contain in one go. So
> if one could manage to make PyQt into a redistributable .pkg, the rest
> should be as easy as creating a meta-package from it and the Nokia
> Qt/Cocoa Mac installer package available from their download site.
> 
> What's needed is an XCode project file to create the PyQt bundle -- I
> have no idea how to do this, but XCode is fairly well documented.
> 
> After all, a utility called PackageMaker.app is shipped with the Apple
> Developer tools -- I haven't looked at it, but it might be the way to go.

Only PackageMaker is needed.  You don't need to use an Xcode project to package up PyQt.  But you would want to copy what was installed to a staging area.

On May 7, 2010, at 9:53 AM, Phil Thompson wrote:

> On Fri, 7 May 2010 09:18:07 -0500, "Edward K. Ream" <edreamleo at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> Hi,
>> 
>> The lack of a binary installer for PyQt on the Mac is becoming
>> something of an embarrassment for Leo. While it is possible to run the
>> qt version of Leo on the Mac, it is an extremely painful process that
>> deters almost all potential users.
>> 
>> Is there any chance of your being able to create such a thing?
> 
> If somebody wants to send me an initial script (or whatever it is that is
> needed) I'd be happy to maintain it.
> 

Note that while the Qt installers work for multiple system versions (10.4 - 10.6), PyQt must be built for a specific python version.  There are also 2 versions of Qt for OS X - Carbon and Cocoa.  So that will make 5 builds to maintain:

Qt Carbon for OS X 10.4 (Python 2.3) (is 2.3 even possible? or desirable?)
Qt Carbon for OS X 10.5 (Python 2.5)
Qt Carbon for OS X 10.6 (Python 2.6)
Qt Cocoa for OS X 10.5 (Python 2.5)
Qt Cocoa for OS X 10.6 (Python 2.6)

This would be for the system Python.  Though the same-python-version build of Pyqt should be usable between the system and python.org Pythons.  You could limit yourself to system versions Apple supports and skip the first one.

Another issue is that building *for* the system Python 2.5 on OS X 10.5 is a bit difficult (impossible?) to do *on* OS X 10.6 (the SDKs don't work for this).  And switching Qt Cocoa/Carbon could be messy.  You'd need 4 Macs (or 2 if you can easily switch Qt's) to build the 4 combinations (not counting the oddball 10.4+2.3).


... Just a bit of reality check ...

-----
William Kyngesburye <kyngchaos*at*kyngchaos*dot*com>
http://www.kyngchaos.com/

Theory of the Universe

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