FEET is a runner for Python. What does that mean?
It makes it easy to create Python scripts, programs, applications, or games and package them up to send to friends, users, players, or whomever you want to share your work with. FEET is currently being built for Windows, but Linux and Mac versions will hopefully arrive in the future!
FEET is just an executable, called feet.exe, that sits in a folder beside
your script that you name main.py. You can zip up this folder and send it
to anyone else on a Windows machine, and when they click the EXE, your
program will run. They don't need to install Python and you never need to build
or package anything.
Just send them your files and the runner.
When users run your program via feet.exe the first time, it will unpack a
runtime to a feet/ sub-folder. You can remove this at any time, especially
before zipping your program to share.
Note: Feet is a prototype, but please let me know if you find it useful and file issues for any improvements that you feel would help make it less of an experiment and more of a real thing.
FEET includes a bootloader written in rust. Make sure you have a recent version of the Rust compiler and Cargo tool installed.
To build feet, install the build dependencies and then run the build script.
pip install -r requirements.txt
python build.py build
# ./dist/feet.exe
To use Feet, copy the built EXE file into any directory with a main.py script and run the feet EXE. Just double-click and run your script. Right now, feet includes Pygame and the Python standard library. Support for other third-party libraries will come in the future.
You can also download a pre-built EXE from the releases.
Feet has a few optional subcommands, as well.
To run an application with Feet, copy the feet.exe binary into the
application folder, alongside a main.py file, and double-click the executable
in your File Explorer or run it from the command line inside the directory.
./feet.exe run
Or, simply
./feet.exe
Feet runs Python apps and games, but much of the strength of Python comes from the great quality of libraries available. Feet has you covered.
To install a library from PyPI, the Python Package Index, into your project's
Lib/ directory, use the library command. For example, install pygame, the
popular game development library for Python, like this:
./feet.exe library pygame
To install a specific version of a library, specify it with the name, like so:
./feet.exe library pygame==1.9.6
When you zip up and share your app or game, the libraries in the Lib/ folder
can be shared along with the rest of your program. Feet takes care of providing
these libraries to your code at runtime.
Some times, things go wrong. When that happens, more experienced Python developers might want to inspect the special environment Feet runs programs in.
Run a Python shell in the Feet environment with the shell command.
./feet.exe shell
Python Feet is a prototype. It definitely has bugs and will definitely have breaking changes. However, if you find it useful, that's great! If you find problems with it or if you want to help, please file issues on the Github page with all the details you can include, or find me on Twitter @ironfroggy to thank, complain to, or discuss Python with.