Make standalone version availaible for download from Thonny web page

[Michael Brenner]

Hi - and to get it off my chest immediately: Thonny is great! Thank you very much for it!

My personal angle is this: In the following months, I will advocate Python and Thonny to many teachers, most of which are not computer scientists, but will (want to or be forced to) teach some basic CS, because it is (rightly so!) added to curricula everywhere.  These people need as much support as possible not only with the CS concepts themselves and the practical perils of programming, but also with setting up and deploying the proper tools.

In the case of Thonny: Not everybody can easily add software to their school computers.  Even if they could, they wouldn't know how or be able to do it once per school year, etc.  Furthermore, both these teachers and their students will want to work with the same environment both in school and at home, new installations in one place being usable at the other immediately.  In my teacher training, I want to hand the colleagues a readily usable version that they can put on their USB sticks as well. But of course I cannot reach all teachers, let alone all kids interested in Python.

I know there's a description for how to set up a portable description somewhere on the wiki (btw, this information is really, really hard to find for people just looking at the Thonny web page and not knowing what they should google for). But this may already be too complicated for many people. So it would be great if, somewhere prominently on the Thonny web page, there would be a way to download a standalone version. (similiar to the Greenfoot standalone version on https://www.greenfoot.org/download )

Thanks again for your great work!

Michael

[Aivar Annamaa]

Hi Michael,

Thank you for the kind words!

Alright, I can publish a zipped portable Thonny (I assume you mean Windows variant). If it is to be used from the USB drive, then it's better to set it up such that it keeps configuration file also in its directory, not under the home directory, right? And I guess it would be also nice to make Tools => Manage Packages and Tools => Manage Plug-ins to install under program directory, not under home. This way the instructor can easily install required extra libraries into their bundle and redistribute it as a zip. I created an issue for this topic: https://github.com/thonny/thonny/issues/697 

best regards,
Aivar

[Michael Brenner]

That sounds amazing! What you say about the location of the configuration file, packages and plug-ins is exactly how I envisioned it.

Thanks  a lot (not least for your amazing response time and immediate action)!

[Michael Brenner]

Is there any news about the zipped portable version? We're training the next group of teachers in May - any chance that we could point them to a portable version on the website by then?

Best wishes,
    Michael

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[Aivar Annamaa]

Hi!

Sorry for late reply!

I hope I find time to publish a zipped version of 3.1.2, but I'll postpone bundling more libraries to next version. Also, while I can make the configuration file to sit under Thonny's code directory, I won't manage to change the 3rd package installation location until a later version.

I'll write a reply here when the zip is done.

best regards,
Aivar

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[Aivar Annamaa]

Hi!

I uploaded the zip: https://github.com/thonny/thonny/releases/download/v3.1.2/thonny-3.1.2-portable-win.zip

Please test it! If it looks good then I'll add it to the download box on Thonny's homepage.

best regards,
Aivar

[Michael Brenner]

Dear Aivar,

sorry I never gave you feedback about the 3.1.2 portable version; our teacher training was moved to the next school year and I got swamped with other stuff, as usual.

But I tested the version just now and it didn't work quite as expected: On a USB device I installed your portable version, then pgzero via the Thonny package manager, turned on pgzero mode, wrote a short script, which ran perfectly. But on a different machine the pgzero package was not found and marked as uninstalled in the package manager. (pgzero mode, however, was still on and the script was loaded to the editor at start, so these thing were indeed stored on the USB drive).

This might all be obsolete anyway by now, since I've just notived that on the DeploymentOptions wiki page, you talk about about a portable version by default in Thonny 3.2 - but which I cannot find anywhere. Is this something you're going to release soon or a typo and actually 3.1.2 is meant?

[Aivar Annamaa]

Hi Michael!

But on a different machine the pgzero package was not found and marked as uninstalled in the package manager.

It's because currently "Tools => Manage packages" installs with `pip install --user`, ie. the packages end up under current user home. This won't be changed in 3.2 either. in order to get the packages onto your USB drive you need to install via command line (as explained in the Wiki).

Version 3.2.0b1 is released only on PyPI. I'll publish binary bundles for the next beta (hopefully next week).

best regards,
Aivar