Re: What is the tlf future?

[Drew Arnett]

The error message told you exactly what was wrong.  That the library
rich was not installed.  Don't worry; this is a common Python newcomer
topic.  rich isn't part of the standard library that comes with
Python, so needs to be installed.  (pypi.org is a large, but not
exhaustive catalog of 3rd party libraries.)  The ecosystem of 3rd
party libraries are part of the magic of Python.

A major rev of python 3.x will have a separate installation.  Part of
that installation is site-packages, a special location where 3rd party
libraries are installed.  (That is, anything not part of the python
standard library.  https://docs.python.org/3/library/index.html)  pip,
also a 3rd party library, is a great tool for installing them.  If
you're using a linux distro, the distro may have packages some of the
3rd party libs, so you can install them with a package manager or so
that programs can require or recommend them.  apt-get install
python3-serial for example is something I'd do on any Debian box I
use, because that is on a list of about 20 3rd party libraries I use
almost every day for work and hobby.

To make things more complicated for new Python folks, there are also
virtual environments to hold 3rd party libraries in addition to
site-packages.  These are useful if you have version conflicts or a
need to have specific versions (for pre-production release testing for
example.)  Learn the idea of site-packages first, then virtualenv.

Many libraries are pure Python (written only in Python).  Usually
those are not a fuss.  Other libraries have C/C++ code.  It is
challenging to write code as portable as Python, so this may or may
not cause fun for portability.  Library authors can publish
pre-compiled libraries if you don't want to use the compilation
portion of the installation tools.  But, if there is a brand new major
rev (3.x), it might be a few days or weeks before your favorite
packages have binaries published.  For those users who don't want to
compile, may need to wait a bit after a major rev.

I have been using Python for all things electrical engineering for 20
years now.  It's still the most productive application programming
language I've seen.  (If you find one better, please let me know; I've
been looking a long time.)  And it dovetails with C/C++, systems
programming languages, in several quite nifty ways if you need to drop
down to that level for performance.  There are some interesting
possible new contenders for systems programming languages (2 that I
can think of), but haven't seen one for application programming, yet.

In 1995, Java promised several things.  One was portability.  Python
actually has that level of portability folks hoped to see in Java.
It's quite nice.  I write software that folks can and do use on Mac,
Windows, Linux, RPis, etc., without recompiling.

The original direction of this thread I find quite interesting.  It's
not a simple little thing doing a serious contest logger.

Fun stuff.

Drew
n7da

On Mon, Oct 17, 2022 at 11:26 AM Ervin Hegedüs <airween@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Martin,
>
> On Mon, Oct 17, 2022 at 12:12:03PM +0200, Martin Kratoska wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> > while trying to check the CQRlog country files with my checker (made by
> > OK2CQR, attached) which worked perfectly with ver. 3.9.
> > The only change was upgrade from 3.9 to 3.10.
>
> "Only"?
>
> You've jumped a main version and you call it as "only"?
>
> As I see in your attached source tree, this software uses pipenv.
>
> If you upgraded your Python (and with this, you upgraded the full
> of your environment), you MUST upgrade your pipenv too. And
> then - as the README.md contains - run again the command
>
> pipenv install
>
> because your new version does not contain it.
>
> > P.S. This is the reason why I HATE Python!
>
> what advice could you give to a person who does not understand CW
> signals?
>
> Hate it or learn it?
>
>
> 73, Ervin
>
>