[PyQt] Create PyQt apps in minutes, not months

[Michael Herrmann]

On 20 December 2017 at 17:22, Patrick Stinson <patrickkidd at gmail.com> wrote:
> Cool idea. Also an important problem, but also a bold goal considering the current state of the art.

Thank you for your reply. Yes it's a bold idea, very much depending on
the scope. Automatic updates will require a server, which will be
difficult. But not impossible as it's all stuff I've already done for
my own app.

> One hurdle that will likely need to be addressed on macOS is the integration of Xcode, which may or may not make some of this project redundant. Depends on your goals, I suppose. Any developer who wishes to sign an app and sell it in the mac app store will have to read a bunch of Apple docs to handle the certificates, app ids, entitlements, iCloud containers, etc. Maybe you can find a way to make that easier, maybe not.

I'll shell out to XCode where required using subprocess.Popen(...).
Especially for code signing. I must admit I have not thought about the
Mac App Store (I'm not using it). That will likely be one of the
things that come later (if at all). For now, I just want to make
public what I already have.

> Personally I have found pyqtdeploy to be an invaluable tool for this. I think it is the best deployment tool out there for PyQt. I use it to generate an Xcode project for macOS and iOS, and then use-it to simply re-write the project every time I make a change. All Xcode config is via qmake vars and plists.

I found pyqtdeploy extremely difficult to use and it kept crashing on
me. It's also slow to run pyqtdeploy and then XCode. But perhaps such
a setup is required if you want to publish to the Mac App Store. I've
had very good experiences with PyInstaller.

> I don’t have any experience with installers, and have only started using Sparkle for auto updates. Integrating that required getting into the Xcode config, as described above.

Yes, I use Sparkle as well for my app. So it will likely be used
behind the scenes in fbs as well.

> Anyway, good luck. I’ll be looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

Thanks!

Michael