Tablet Python #1 - Relocatable Software

Python is becoming more and more popular for development on the Nokia internet tablets. It is indeed a very powerful and clear language and makes it easy to write applications that work on all internet tablet versions.

With this post I'm starting a new series on nice Python tricks which might be interesting to tablet software developers. So, if you're doing something in Python on your tablet, this series is for you!

In this first episode I will talk about writing relocatable software. This is software which works no matter where it's installed. There are no hardwired absolute paths to resources in relocatable software.

Knowing where you are

Every Python module knows the path where it's installed. You can retrieve the module's path by reading the __file__ variable.

print "This module resides at:", __file__

This makes it easy to find the directory where your app is installed:

import os
path = os.path.dirname(__file__)

Finding your resources

So if you want to load bundled resources into your application, you know where to find them:

path = os.path.dirname(__file__)
image_file = os.path.join(path, "images", "foo.png")
img = gtk.Image()
img.set_from_file(image_file)

Starting the application

This is the way I use to make my programs executable on the tablet. All of the program files and resources are within a subdirectory (e.g. /usr/lib/myapp/) together with the executable start module, which could look like this:

#! /usr/bin/env python

from mediabox.App import App

app = App()
app.run()

Let's assume this file is /usr/lib/mediabox/MediaBox. Then I make a symbolic link to this file as /usr/bin/MediaBox, and it's all done.

If I move my software to another place, I would just have to update this link.