Tell them, my song.

OS X Leopard comes with a version of Python pre-installed, but this version is neither up-to-date nor is it a good choice when you want to create application bundles that also have to be compatible with OS X Tiger. That is why I have chosen to install the official Python distribution from Python’s official website. It can be found here:

• http://www.python.org/download/

For GUI applications, wxPython probably is the best choice available for the Python programming language and platform. I use the Unicode-version from here:

• http://www.wxpython.org/download.php#binaries

I use the pydev plugin for Eclipse for my Python coding, and I find it great!

• http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=85796

I use it with the classic edition of Eclipse:

• http://www.eclipse.org/downloads

For deployment, py2app is the tool of choice, and it can be obtained from here:

• http://pypi.python.org/pypi/py2app

A nice multimedia and windowing library for Python is pyglet:

• http://www.pyglet.org/download.html

I install PyGame from the source code:

• http://www.pygame.org

PyOpenGL can be found here:

• http://pyopengl.sourceforge.net

Rabbyt is a fast 2D sprite engine for Python that uses OpenGL and works nicely with pyglet. You can find it here:

• http://pypi.python.org/pypi/Rabbyt
• http://matthewmarshall.org/projects/rabbyt (This is the developer’s homepage)

For using SQLite with Python, I found pysqlite2 here:

• http://oss.itsystementwicklung.de/trac/pysqlite/wiki/WikiStart#Downloads

All of the modules and libraries that I use are not licensed under the GPL, and I want to keep it that way. Strangely enough, the BSD-licensed database server PostgreSQL caused me some problems here, and it took me a while to find a Python library for it that was available under a more BSD/MIT-style license. However, finally I discovered PyGreSQL, which you can get from here:

• http://www.pygresql.org/readme.html#where-to-get

If you need more number crunching power or simply higher performance, Pyrex might be what you’re looking for. You can get it from this website:

• http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/greg.ewing/python/Pyrex

Last but not least something really interesting for multi-threaded programming: Stackless Python.

• http://zope.stackless.com

Some of these libraries are only available in source code form for OS X, but the default sudo python setup.py install command is usually all the magic that you have to use to get them up and running.

These books are passionate works of love and the best titles that I’ve found about Python:

This one also comes in very handy:

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