Hacker News Reader

Comment by 120photo | Hacker News Reader

I tried porting a Python utility I wrote to Go specifically because I did not want people to have to install any 3rd party libraries (in this case just one). If anything I had a much deeper appreciation as to how much Python does for you and just lets you work. I would still like to port someday. For now I can containerize my app but that would still require people to install docker and learn how to use docker.

View on HN

The easiest way to do this is to use shiv[0] if you don't mind asking people to have Python itself installed; if you want a truly "one file bundle" you should use PyInstaller[1] (which bundles a Python interpreter)

[0]: https://shiv.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

[1]: https://pyinstaller.org/en/stable/

You don't need docker to bundle an app with custom libraries. You can use AppImage which is pretty much just an ordinary app install rolled into a single file.

i guess he's not using linux, otherwise python dependencies would be no problem

Docker is linux specific. It can only run in a VM on non-linux platforms.

It requires a linux subsystem, true, but not a fully fledged VM. The subsystem still shares the file system with the primary OS, for a start. And while I haven't tried it, the instructions for installing AppImage on WSL (for example) don't look trivial.

WSL is a fully fledged VM under the hood, it's just well integrated.

MS call it a "lightweight utility virtual machine", and "not a traditional VM experience", whatever that means. Docker also works on MacOS, with a basic linux distro running under hypervisor that again, I'm not sure qualifies as a 'fully fledged VM' (at least in terms of user access to it).

WSL, starting with v2, is a fully fledged virtual machine, and comes with its own built in Linux kernel. The 'lightweight' part is because resource allocation is bit more dynamic than your usual VirtalBox VM. Other than that, there is no difference.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com