Python is software available from the Internet, and Python's best day-to-day resources can all be found there. This appendix describes the software that is used in this book and how to install it.
Most Python-related software can be downloaded for free, and much of it can be downloaded as source code and compiled — for those of you interested in doing that for yourself. For those readers who begin with the second part of the book, this may be the challenge you're looking for. However, the broader audience for this book will be glad to know that everything you need to follow along with the book's examples can be installed as packages for the operating systems on which they are supported.
The examples in this book require that your computer have additional software installed, as well as an appropriate and functioning operating system such as Windows 2000, XP, XP Pro, 2003, or Vista; Linux (Red Hat's Fedora RC3 or newer; Debian testing or unstable; or a similarly current distribution), Ubuntu, or Mac OSX.
Following is a brief list of the required software, with a description and the URL from which the software can be downloaded:
Python:
www.python.org/is the home page for the Python language. You can find out about all things Python there, including additional online tutorials, introductions to the language, and mailing lists to help you out. The people who write, maintain, change, and use Python are there. You can find a complete, if terse, set of documentation available there as well. The version of software used in this book is Python 3.1.1, and to download it you can click the Download link at the top of the Python home page, or go directly towww.python.org/download/. If you're lucky, maybe you'll find a more recent version of Python there that you can use! At the time of publication, Python 3.1.1 has been released.For Windows, use the Windows
.msiinstaller of the most recent Python 3.1.1 installations.For Linux systems, install the package provided for your distribution by the maintainer of the distribution (for example, the
.debpackages fromdebian.orgor the.rpmpackages fromredhat.com, such as the information atwww.python.org/download/releases/3.1.1/). For other Linux distributions, see the home page for this book for comments from other readers that the authors will be compiling.For Mac users, you can find information about Python 3.1.1 on the Mac at
www.python.org/download/mac/.Tkinter: The GUI programming chapter in this book is written using the
tkinterinterface, which gives you access to the Tcl/TK graphical user interface toolkit from within Python. It is cross-platform and is portable across every system.For more information, visit
http://wiki.python.org/moin/TkInter.PyUnit: The unit testing framework for Python. This module provides a systematic way of writing tests within your own source code so that you can verify that your code works as you expect. PyUnit now comes as part of the standard Python library, and is better known as unittest.
PyUnit's home page is at
http://pyunit.sourceforge.net/.MySQL: A popular and fast open-source relational database system. Python has robust MySQL support:
www.mysql.com/— This is the home page formysql.com, the company that maintains the MySQL database.http://sourceforge.net/projects/mysql-python— This is the home page of themysql-pythonmodule, but there is a minimum amount of documentation online.
Jython: An implementation of the Python language in pure Java, Jython provides access to all of the tools available in the commercial Java product space, but it enables you to program using Python as your language. Visit
www.jython.org/.Sqlite3: For our database section, we used Sqlite3 to create simple database structures. It is a lightweight library written in C that is compliant with the DB-API 2.0. You can find more information at
http://docs.python.org/library/sqlite3.html.Django: A higher-level web framework for Python, Django is a great tool to get a site up and running in no time. Perfect for database driven sites and web applications, it helps save time by setting up a basic "framework" for the developer. To download and read more about it, visit
http://www.djangoproject.com/.
You can find a lot of Python-related information on the Internet. In addition, you can find information related to the specific components that appear in this book. As a result of the constantly changing nature of Python and its modules, please look at this book's web page at www.wrox.com, and follow the instructions in the introduction to find the specific page for this book. That's the place to go for help with installing software, to download samples and provide feedback to the authors, and to receive help with anything in the book. In addition, you can find more packages and information about the ones that have been mentioned here online at the website for this book.