8 ms·
Portable versions of development tools
- thijsvandien 5y agoNote that 3.9 is the first release to not work on Windows 7 anymore, which is still rather widespread. At the same time, to the end user, it offers very little over 3.8.
- edukodo 5y agoSo, Portable Python 3.8 would be a good idea, non ? An 3.4 for XP ? XP still exists ?
- thijsvandien 5y agoYes, I think it would make sense to provide a kit based on 3.8 instead, which does constitute a big enough improvement over 3.4 to drop some platforms, while remaining in support for years to come. For workstation use, I suppose XP is dead now—one may certainly hope so...
- dataflow 5y agoSome Googling suggests some 25M Windows XP users as of Sep 2020. Also see: https://www.quora.com/Is-using-Windows-XP-in-2020-still-a-good-idea/answer/Ond%C5%99ej-Ma%C5%A1ita https://www.quora.com/Is-using-Windows-XP-in-2020-still-a-go...
- thijsvandien 5y agoWhile that could certainly be true, these examples are all environments where running anything but mission critical legacy software (heaven forbid unofficial apps off the internet) wouldn't be acceptable anyway.
- dataflow 5y agoKind of a tangent (and not an XP user!), but who defines mission-critical? Why can't normal people have things that they consider mission-critical? If my machine updates and crashes or breaks some program, and it prevents me from being able to do my job, or prevents my small business from running, it's OK because I'm just a random nobody and the machine isn't mission-critical because... why exactly? Is it not critical the mission of supporting my family and paying my bills? Only if it's a Large Company with millions of dollars to lose then it gets blessed as mission-critical? Whose mission is critical here exactly?
- thijsvandien 5y agoAnyone is welcome to consider their system mission critical, and if so, they should act accordingly, i.e. choose control and safety over convenience. Portable apps such as this one have no place there. My point was: keeping support for Windows 7 at the cost of basically nothing seems sensible for now. That leaving some niche of Windows XP, Windows 98 or MS-DOS users does not change the balance. Few still use these platforms to begin with, and even fewer would benefit from a portable Python app.
- SturgeonsLaw 5y ago> but who defines mission-critical? Well, each user, so you are well within your rights to define any of your systems as mission-critical, if that's how you consider them. There is no Council of Critical Missions that needs to evaluate applications. :)
- pansa2 5y ago> while remaining in support for years to come. Python 3.8 has already reached the point where it’s only receiving security updates - not other bug fixes.
- ronsor 5y agoWhile both 7 and XP are out of support, 7 has significantly more marketshare than XP and is still used by many people.
- thijsvandien 5y agoWindows 7 is covered by paid Extended Support Updates (ESU) till Feb 2023 even.
- BiteCode_dev 5y agoOr even over 3.7. The next exciting release is 3.10, which features pattern matching, union litterals, and above all, way, wayyy better error messages
- hpaavola 5y agohttps://winpython.github.io/ https://winpython.github.io/ has portable packages of many python versions and each official release has embeddable package which requires no installation ( but does not come with pip, and once you install pip there, it kinda stops being portable as that pip will always point to the location it was initially installed).
- edukodo 5y agoWe don't have this problem with Python Portable from portabledevapps.
- phpdistiller 5y agoIt's a 64 bits version. Does anyone still use a 32 bits machine ?
- notRobot 5y agoDue to incompetent IT staff, I know for a fact that the school I used to go to has 64-bit i5 processors, but the OS installed on them is Windows 10 32-bit, lol
- kenniskrag 5y agowith only 4GB RAM :)
- mattowen_uk 5y agoUnder Windows, if you have some legacy 16-bit application from the dawn of time, you can run it on Windows 10 32-bit, but not on Windows 10 64-bit. It's surprising how much industrial equipment is still controlled by 30 year old applications.
- phpdistiller 5y agoIs Spyder the best IDE ? Is there any other alternative ? Free and open source ?
- phireal 5y agoThe community edition of PyCharm is pretty widely regarded. VSCode is also pretty good but I would say it's more of an impressive text editor than an IDE.
- phpdistiller 5y agoWhat about Atom ?
- sprkwd 5y agoSlow
- mdaniel 5y agoupdate: ah, great minds think alike, I guess: https://github.com/portapps/intellij-idea-community-portable/blob/master/main.go#L40-L44 https://github.com/portapps/intellij-idea-community-portable... although there's no obvious reference to PyCharm, I'd bet $1 it would work the same --- While I haven't personally tried it, I bet by setting "IDEA_PROPERTIES=%CD%\portable.properties" and then: idea.config.path=./portable-config idea.system.path=./portable-system idea.plugins.path=./portable-plugins idea.log.path=./portable-log there's a reasonable chance PyCharm (and, as the values imply, IJ) would run portably, too I use those overrides when trying to isolate my copy of IJ for reporting bugs, but I don't recall if they work _exactly_ the same for PyCharm, and for sure I haven't confirmed that setting them prevents writing into other directories
- phpdistiller 5y agoBtw, we should say Portable Python or Python Portable ?
- lewishogan 5y agoThere's a lot of value in remotely accessible or portable tools. When I was in secondary school I began my experiments with Java using the JXXX compiler service (still available many years later at https://www.innovation.ch/java/java_compile.html https://www.innovation.ch/java/java_compile.html). The school didn't allow running executables on the version of Windows used at the time (Windows 7 I believe), but permitted running any kind of JARs (as long as they had the appropriate Manifest to launch without needing access to a command line). Without access to a service like this it's quite feasible that my entire life path would have changed and I am filled with eternal gratitude that people exist out there who are willing to provide such services.
- mdaniel 5y ago> but permitted running any kind of JARs (as long as they had the appropriate Manifest to launch without needing access to a command line). Heh, sounds like an opportunity for Runtime.getRuntime().exec("cmd.exe");
- phtrivier 5y agoVery silly question : I'm used to "portable" as applied to code (meaning it does not need a lot of changes to be run on different architecture) ; and in French, "portable" is the colloquial term for "mobile phone". But what does "portable" mean in this context ?
- detaro 5y agonot requiring installation. (meaning you can bring a USB drive full of useful tools with you and use on random PCs)
- Haemm0r 5y agofor clarification, as you know for sure, but others maybe don't: ... and keeping all the settings on the USB drive too. //edit: typo
- ______- 5y ago> not requiring installation It's a strange quirk of Windows that when you install a new piece of software, it will ask you in the wizard where you want to store it (C: drive or D: drive). D: is usually an external hard-drive, and so I select that. But the D: drive can magically become the E: drive in some cases when you have other media inserted like an SD card. So this is why I prefer portability since the path is agnostic and portable software doesn't care about drive letters.
- ______- 5y agoOnly learning about Brave portable now: https://portapps.io/app/brave-portable/ https://portapps.io/app/brave-portable/
- ______- 5y agoThere's a much bigger list here that covers other categories of software: https://portapps.io/apps/ https://portapps.io/apps/