Is There A Portable Python Interpreter That Will Run On Mac Os X 10.6 From A Usb Key?

I've been running myself ragged trying to find a portable interpreter that I can run from a USB key on my work computer. Work comp is running Mac OS X 10.6, fairly restricted envi

Solution 1:

Python is already on OS X. I would look at trying to find an editor/shell that will work from a usb drive.

Solution 2:

If you don't have access to a terminal on the machine and can't install apps, using any Python is going to be problematic. The only useful out-of-the-box OS X GUI app provided by a standard Python build is IDLE.app. It should be possible to build a custom Python on OS X with a framework build and IDLE.app rooted on a disk image file system or on a USB drive. But you would have to do it yourself. Python framework builds on OS X are built to be installed to a specific path and, so, can't easily be moved once built. There are parameters to the configure script in the Python source distribution to specify the paths. See ./configure --help and --enable-framework= and --prefix= and the like. You'll need to experiment a bit.

Perhaps a more interesting and robust idea would be to package IDLE or your own frontend shell window up with Python as a standalone app using py2app. py2app already knows how to embed a Python framework into an app bundle so you'd just have to supply the frontend script. Lots of options there.