CODEWITHSUNDEEP
python
Lynob
Lynob

Reputation: 5337

How to make python modules compatible with different OS?

I have windows xp, I have found some python libraries that only work for windows xp and thus if you have a mac os or linux or windows 7, you can't download my program because it won't work, how to make these libraries compatible with these OS, I can't ask the creator of the libraries so I have to download the source code and modify it, and i have to make it compatible on these OS using my xp :D well my brother's pc is windows 7, but I don't have mac OS or linux (unless i can use VM)

EDIT

my application is not simple

Upvotes: 1

Views: 594

Answers (2)

Nico
Nico

Reputation: 1328

Your question is quite broad:

1) Development and testing:

Use VMs, absolutely, they are great for testing on OS you don't natively use, and to have a clean environment for testing (eg. test even windows stuff on a clean windows VM if you can, you might find out you're missing some dependencies that you took for granted on your dev machine).

2) Actual library porting:

Depending on the library this may or may not be difficult. Why is this library only working on windows? does it use specific DLLs, via ctypes or swig or some other bindings. If the library is python code (not a C library), is it tied to windows python APIs?

There are many things to take into account, if using system specific APIs/libs, can they be faked on other OSs (write small abstraction over them), or does it require a lot more code. You get the gist.

Upvotes: 0

Eli Bendersky
Eli Bendersky

Reputation: 273696

You're asking a very general question. Perhaps overly general.

Generally, unless your application is relatively simple, it's impossible to guarantee that it is going to work on Linux and Mac OS X by only having Windows available. You will have to at least test it on Linux. Mac OS X is rather similar to Linux in many aspects, so you may get off the hook there, although for more complex cases it won't suffice.

Python is not much different from other languages in this respect - it makes writing cross platform code easier, but it won't solve all your problems.

Luckily, installing Linux on a VM is quick and free. Personally I use VirtualBox with a Ubuntu installation on top. It takes less than an hour to set up such a system from scratch (download Vbox, download an Ubuntu image and install it).

Upvotes: 1

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