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jmason86 / MinXSS_Beacon_Decoder

Beacon decoder for the MinXSS CubeSat in space; MinXSS-2 launch on 2018-11-19
http://lasp.colorado.edu/home/minxss
GNU General Public License v3.0
11 stars 6 forks source link

#!/usr/bin/env python3 #26

Closed K4KDR closed 5 years ago

K4KDR commented 5 years ago

If it would not disrupt any other aspect of the code, would it be possible to place:

#!/usr/bin/env python3

on the first line of minxss_beacon_decoder.py ?

I have to add this line after each update to enable the app to be run by a mouse-click from file explorer.

While it runs fine without this directive from a command line with:

python3 minxss_beacon_decoder.py

... some users may prefer to launch the app from the graphical file explorer. Perhaps this would not matter if only Python3 was installed, but like many people I have multiple versions of Python installed.

screenshot from 2018-10-04 01-00-06

jmason86 commented 5 years ago

Testing whether it will disrupt other aspects of the code now.

jmason86 commented 5 years ago

So this does work on my machine but it looks like it is really bad practice in a codebase intended for wide usage on any platform where people can have who knows what kind of environments set up. This article highlights some of the problems. As just one example, if someone doesn't have an interpreter called python3 in usr/bin/env, then the code will crash right at that very first line of execution.

In the README, I've listed the two supported ways for running the code, either from:

  1. the compiled code (only provided with the releases), or
  2. by doing a python minxss_beacon_decoder at the command line.
  3. Alternatively (but not listed), is how I do it. I open up the folder with the code in PyCharm (free IDE) and just hit the Run button (or type ctrl + r). You have to set up a configuration to tell it what you want it to run, but you only have to do that once, and it's easy to pull down code changes from the repository within PyCharm as well and can then just hit Run again on the new code.

Sorry I don't have a more satisfactory resolution for this one. The distribution risks of including that shebang in the code just outweigh the impact on convenience, even for my main co-developer 😕.

K4KDR commented 5 years ago

Thanks so much for the education - of course I know zero about what the correct way is to setup .py code for general use so the info is much appreciated! Downloading Python3 for Windows now so that I can test on that platform as well.

jmason86 commented 5 years ago

No problem! Honestly, this project is very much a learning experience for me too. It is SUPER helpful having such an active participant to help me catch problems, test on different platforms and with different set ups, and suggest features. This thing is so much better for the effort you've put in.