Pygame Package Builder is nearing 1.0 beta status. I’ve successfully slain 99% of those creepy bugs that the Python gods decided to unleash on me at the last minute and stand victorious over a pile of dead bug carcasses holding my sword and covered in bug goo.
Enough hyperbole. Yes, I managed to hunker down with my spare time this week and knock out the next-to-last of the critical, really-gotta-have-it features and am now working on that absolutely last, critical, really-got-to-have-it feature. Although this one is optional, it will certainly come in handy.
One thing I want to mention before I put the beta source code up for people to download is that this is more than just a single, multiplatform GUI app. This is more like a build ecosystem. While one can use the GUI to not only build and save all of their project information for builds and do the builds, there is also a command-line variant included that uses the same project files and build engine.
Even if you only want to use the CLI builder, you will still have to use the GUI client to make the project file. The project file is key to the whole system. You can also send this to someone else, who can look it over in their own client and see if you’ve made it correctly.
Rather than look at it from a negative POV for those that loathe any kind of GUI, I see this as a positive thing. Because the GUI lets you easily look over all of your build without having to remember a complex series of commands or search through lists in your editor looking for a mistake, then flipping back to the CLI and try that build one more time and see if it worked. How many of us have said that, perhaps with an added sigh at the end?
This takes the guesswork out of building a pygame-based binary build, which is something that, based on my own fumblings around on the Internet and my previous post’s popularity seem to denote this is not an uncommon occurrence. It is from this that I have spent the last 4 months trying very hard to make PPB a viable tool for the community to use, give feedback on, and grow.
I have been asked what license PPB will be released under. GPL seems to fit the spirit of this project I think.
