pup 1.0.0a1

Python Mu Packager

pup is (in the early stages of development and risks becoming) a packaging tool for GUI programs written in Python.

Fundamentally, its raison d’être is producing macOS and Windows native packages for distributing the Mu Editor to Python beginners around the world. As a by-product of that, it might become effective at packaging generic Python written GUI programs. If that ever becomes the case, then great. Otherwise, that’s fine too.

The purpose, again, is to package the Mu Editor for macOS and Windows distribution.

Foreword

As I write these words, I’m not really sure for how long pup will actually live – let me be clear: it’s not that I don’t think the Mu Editor, in particular, and the world of Python GUI applications in general don’t need a simple and effective native packager, I honestly do; moreover, I do believe that there should be more diversity and more GUI applications – even if ugly (whatever that means!) – in contrast with the trends towards web-based ones, like we have been observing throughout the last decade or so.

As was saying, I’m not really sure for how long pup will live. Why? Mostly because pup is kind of a conceptual fork of briefcase, up to a point. I gave this idea lots of thought and figured out that, for the near-term future, creating pup would be the best option for packaging Mu. Later it its life, it may make sense to integrate its “tricks” into briefcase, which is a more generic and mature tool, with much higher aspirations.

The fact of the matter is that Mu itself is a very particular kind of GUI program: it is a program to create programs, a program that runs and debugs programs, a program that brings in third-party dependencies, a program that uploads code to micro-controllers, and so much more.

Mu is at a development stage where several things “must” happen somewhat fast enough: for one, robust support for bringing in third-party packages from PyPI, something that mostly works on Windows and fails miserably on macOS, already has a re-architected solution that now unfortunatelly fails when packaged natively – we could, of course, hack our way through the currently existing, somewhat brittle and inconsistent Mu packaging tools and scripts to fix that. Then, of course, we’re one year (!!!) late to the macOS application notarization requirement race (party?). The end result is as expected: beginner programmers having wierd issues and unnecessary barriers with Mu on their computers. Completely the opposite of Mu’s purpose!

Creating pup will allow the Mu team to fully decouple the packaging efforts from Mu’s own development while, at the same time, simplifying the autonomous and hopefully fast-paced development of a fully automatable packaging tool for its own purposes. In the near term, the Holy Grail is for Nicholas to be able to type something like pup go on on his development environment and have it automatically produce the final Windows or macOS distribution artifacts: signed, notarized, with all the required “seals”, and working as well as it works for any of us under our development systems: in other words, “works for me”-everywhere!

“How hard can it be?” :)

Wish List

Near term:

• If it’s pip install-able it should be pup package-able.

• Distributions must have exactly one setuptools entry point.

• Supports:

  • Recent Windows and macOS operating systems.

  • CPython 3.7 and 3.8.

  • GUIs built on top of tkinter and pyqt5.

  • Signing/notarizing binaries and installers per platform requirements.

Needs thinking:

• Support 32 bit Windows or go 64 bit only?

• Support NSIS-based Windows installers? MSI ones? Both?

• Windows tend to need installers: consider localization (argh!).

• macOS distributions should be DMG file based.

• Probably want to go plugin-based.

• Can work offline, as far as platform signing/notarization requirements allow.

• Installers/DMGs should have a LICENSE for the user to read/agree with.

Later:

• Supports:

  • Linux Snap, Flatpak, AppImage (no idea what I’m talking about here!). :)

  • Current CPython.

  • GUIs built on top of pygame, pgzero, pyside2, kivy, arcade.

• Direct to “store” publishing.

Non-trivial at first sight:

• Cross-platform packaging. Challenges:

  • Cross-platform pip installing.

  • Cross-platform signing.

More

To learn more about pup you will have to wait a bit. Development is going forward in the open on GitHub at https://github.com/mu-editor/pup/.

Installation

pup will be distributed via PyPI. Install it with:

$ pip install pup

Thanks

• Nicholas Tollervey for the amazing Mu Editor.

• The Mu contributors I’ve been having the privilege of working more directly with, Carlos Pereira Atencio, Martin Dybdal, and Tim Golden, as well as the others whom I haven’t met yet but whose contributions I highly respect.

• To Russell Keith-Magee for the inspiring BeeWare project and, in particular, for briefcase that being used as the packaging tool for Mu on macOS as of this writing, serves as a great inspiration to pup.

• To Gregory Szorc for the incredible Python Standalone Builds project, on top of which we plan to package redistributable Python GUI applications.

About

pup is in the process of being created by Tiago Montes, with the wonderful support of the Mu development team.