Turn Python Script Into Mac App

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  1. Turn Python Script Into Mac App Store
  2. Turn Python Script Into Mac App Store
  3. How To Run A Python Script
  4. Run Python On Mac
  5. Turn Python Script Into Mac App Free

Python is a popular programming language that is reliable, flexible, easy to learn, free to use on all operating systems, and supported by both a strong developer community and many free libraries. The language supports all manners of development, including web applications, web services, desktop apps, scripting, and scientific computing and is used by many universities, scientists, casual developers, and professional developers alike.

Visual Studio provides first-class language support for Python. This tutorial guides you through the following steps:

Prerequisites

How to run a Python script¶. Your best way to get started with Python on Mac OS X is through the IDLE integrated development environment, see section The IDE and use the Help menu when the IDE is running. If you want to run Python scripts from the Terminal window command line or from the Finder you first need an editor to create your script. Nov 28, 2015 In this tutorial we’ll be using py2app to create a standalone OSX application from a Python 2 or 3 source code with a simple Tkinter user interface. 'py2app is a Python setuptools command which will allow you to make standalone application bundles and plugins from Python scripts. Py2app is similar in purpose and design to py2exe for Windows.' Relevant links about py2app: Documentation Source. As a piece of code typed into an interactive session; How to Run Python Code Interactively. A widely used way to run Python code is through an interactive session. To start a Python interactive session, just open a command-line or terminal and then type in python, or python3 depending on your Python installation, and then hit Enter. Jun 13, 2016  Unfortunately, not every Mac app has scripting support, and those that do may not always have scripting support for every task you want to automate. You can often work around such limitations, however, by writing a user interface script, commonly called a UI or GUI script.

  • Visual Studio 2017 with the Python workload installed. For instructions, see Work with Python in Visual Studio - Step 0.
  • Visual Studio 2019 with the Python workload installed. For instructions, see Work with Python in Visual Studio - Step 0.

You can also use an earlier version of Visual Studio with the Python Tools for Visual Studio installed. See Install Python support in Visual Studio.

I have an Applescript that simply opens a Dialog Box, asks for a user input and runs a Terminal Command and spits out the answer. It works great in AppleScript Editor yet I am trying to work out how I could package this Script File along with an icon to make a Mac App for my personal use.

Step 1: Create a new Python project

A project is how Visual Studio manages all the files that come together to produce a single application, including source code, resources, configurations, and so on. A project formalizes and maintains the relationship between all the project's files as well as external resources that are shared between multiple projects. As such, projects allow your application to effortlessly expand and grow much easier than simply managing a project's relationships in ad hoc folders, scripts, text files, and even your own mind.

In this tutorial you begin with a simple project containing a single, empty code file.

  1. In Visual Studio, select File > New > Project (Ctrl+Shift+N), which brings up the New Project dialog. Here you browse templates across different languages, then select one for your project and specify where Visual Studio places files.

  2. To view Python templates, select Installed > Python on the left, or search for 'Python'. Using search is a great way to find a template when you can't remember its location in the languages tree.

    Notice how Python support in Visual Studio includes a number of project templates, including web applications using the Bottle, Flask, and Django frameworks. For the purposes of this walkthrough, however, let's start with an empty project.

  3. Select the Python Application template, specify a name for the project, and select OK.

  4. After a few moments, Visual Studio shows the project structure in the Solution Explorer window (1). The default code file is open in the editor (2). The Properties window (3) also appears to show additional information for any item selected in Solution Explorer, including its exact location on disk.

  5. Take a few moments to familiarize yourself with Solution Explorer, which is where you browse files and folders in your project.

    (1) Highlighted in bold is your project, using the name you gave in the New Project dialog. On disk, this project is represented by a .pyproj file in your project folder.

    (2) At the top level is a solution, which by default has the same name as your project. A solution, represented by a .sln file on disk, is a container for one or more related projects. For example, if you write a C++ extension for your Python application, that C++ project could reside within the same solution. The solution might also contain a project for a web service, along with projects for dedicated test programs.

    (3) Under your project you see source files, in this case only a single .py file. Selecting a file displays its properties in the Properties window. Double-clicking a file opens it in whatever way is appropriate for that file.

    (4) Also under the project is the Python Environments node. When expanded, you see the Python interpreters that are available to you. Expand an interpreter node to see the libraries that are installed into that environment (5).

    Right-click any node or item in Solution Explorer to access a menu of applicable commands. For example, the Rename command allows you to change the name of any node or item, including the project and the solution.

Next step

Go deeper

  • Python projects in Visual Studio.
  • Python for Beginners (python.org)
Author

Bob Savage <bobsavage@mac.com>

Python on a Macintosh running Mac OS X is in principle very similar to Python onany other Unix platform, but there are a number of additional features such asthe IDE and the Package Manager that are worth pointing out.

4.1. Getting and Installing MacPython¶

Mac OS X 10.8 comes with Python 2.7 pre-installed by Apple. If you wish, youare invited to install the most recent version of Python 3 from the Pythonwebsite (https://www.python.org). A current “universal binary” build of Python,which runs natively on the Mac’s new Intel and legacy PPC CPU’s, is availablethere.

What you get after installing is a number of things:

  • A Python3.8 folder in your Applications folder. In hereyou find IDLE, the development environment that is a standard part of officialPython distributions; and PythonLauncher, which handles double-clicking Pythonscripts from the Finder.

  • A framework /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework, which includes thePython executable and libraries. The installer adds this location to your shellpath. To uninstall MacPython, you can simply remove these three things. Asymlink to the Python executable is placed in /usr/local/bin/.

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The Apple-provided build of Python is installed in/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework and /usr/bin/python,respectively. You should never modify or delete these, as they areApple-controlled and are used by Apple- or third-party software. Remember thatif you choose to install a newer Python version from python.org, you will havetwo different but functional Python installations on your computer, so it willbe important that your paths and usages are consistent with what you want to do.

IDLE includes a help menu that allows you to access Python documentation. If youare completely new to Python you should start reading the tutorial introductionin that document.

If you are familiar with Python on other Unix platforms you should read thesection on running Python scripts from the Unix shell.

4.1.1. How to run a Python script¶

Your best way to get started with Python on Mac OS X is through the IDLEintegrated development environment, see section The IDE and use the Help menuwhen the IDE is running.

If you want to run Python scripts from the Terminal window command line or fromthe Finder you first need an editor to create your script. Mac OS X comes with anumber of standard Unix command line editors, vim andemacs among them. If you want a more Mac-like editor,BBEdit or TextWrangler from Bare Bones Software (seehttp://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/index.html) are good choices, as isTextMate (see https://macromates.com/). Other editors includeGvim (http://macvim-dev.github.io/macvim/) and Aquamacs(http://aquamacs.org/).

Turn Python Script Into Mac App Store

To run your script from the Terminal window you must make sure that/usr/local/bin is in your shell search path.

Turn Python Script Into Mac App Store

To run your script from the Finder you have two options:

App

  • Drag it to PythonLauncher

  • Select PythonLauncher as the default application to open yourscript (or any .py script) through the finder Info window and double-click it.PythonLauncher has various preferences to control how your script islaunched. Option-dragging allows you to change these for one invocation, or useits Preferences menu to change things globally.

4.1.2. Running scripts with a GUI¶

With older versions of Python, there is one Mac OS X quirk that you need to beaware of: programs that talk to the Aqua window manager (in other words,anything that has a GUI) need to be run in a special way. Use pythonwinstead of python to start such scripts.

With Python 3.8, you can use either python or pythonw.

How To Run A Python Script

4.1.3. Configuration¶

Python on OS X honors all standard Unix environment variables such asPYTHONPATH, but setting these variables for programs started from theFinder is non-standard as the Finder does not read your .profile or.cshrc at startup. You need to create a file~/.MacOSX/environment.plist. See Apple’s Technical Document QA1067 fordetails.

For more information on installation Python packages in MacPython, see sectionInstalling Additional Python Packages.

4.2. The IDE¶

MacPython ships with the standard IDLE development environment. A goodintroduction to using IDLE can be found athttp://www.hashcollision.org/hkn/python/idle_intro/index.html.

4.3. Installing Additional Python Packages¶

There are several methods to install additional Python packages:

  • Packages can be installed via the standard Python distutils mode (pythonsetup.pyinstall).

  • Many packages can also be installed via the setuptools extensionor pip wrapper, see https://pip.pypa.io/.

Run Python On Mac

4.4. GUI Programming on the Mac¶

There are several options for building GUI applications on the Mac with Python.

PyObjC is a Python binding to Apple’s Objective-C/Cocoa framework, which isthe foundation of most modern Mac development. Information on PyObjC isavailable from https://pypi.org/project/pyobjc/.

The standard Python GUI toolkit is tkinter, based on the cross-platformTk toolkit (https://www.tcl.tk). An Aqua-native version of Tk is bundled with OSX by Apple, and the latest version can be downloaded and installed fromhttps://www.activestate.com; it can also be built from source.

Turn Python Script Into Mac App Free

wxPython is another popular cross-platform GUI toolkit that runs natively onMac OS X. Packages and documentation are available from https://www.wxpython.org.

PyQt is another popular cross-platform GUI toolkit that runs natively on MacOS X. More information can be found athttps://riverbankcomputing.com/software/pyqt/intro.

4.5. Distributing Python Applications on the Mac¶

The standard tool for deploying standalone Python applications on the Mac ispy2app. More information on installing and using py2app can be foundat http://undefined.org/python/#py2app.

4.6. Other Resources¶

The MacPython mailing list is an excellent support resource for Python users anddevelopers on the Mac:

Another useful resource is the MacPython wiki: