Getting started with ActivePython on Linux
- Installation location:
/opt/ActivePython-3.7
by default, but can be specified at install time.
Running Python and the Interactive Shell
The ActivePython installer on Linux, AIX and HP-UX installs to
/opt/ActivePython-3.7
by default, but an alternate
install directory (for example, somewhere in your home directory) can be
specified at install time. To be able to simply run python
from
the shell you either need to add this install directory’s bin
dir
to your PATH
:
If you use the Bash shell place the following in your ~/.bashrc
file.
PATH=/opt/ActivePython-3.7/bin:$PATH; export PATH
If you use the tcsh
shell place the following in
your ~/.cshrc
file.
setenv PATH /opt/ActivePython-3.7/bin:$PATH
Alternatively, you can create symlinks from some directory already on your PATH
(commonly /usr/local/bin
) to python
:
sudo ln -sf <strong>/opt/ActivePython-3.7</strong>/bin/python3.7 /usr/local/bin/python3.7
sudo ln -sf /usr/local/bin/python3.7 /usr/local/bin/python
Type python
in the shell. (If you modified your shell startup
script, you may need to start a new shell to see the PATH changes.) You should
see something like the following:
ActivePython 3.7.4.3704 (ActiveState Software Inc.) based on Python 3.7.4 (default, Mar 21 2019, 09:33:37) [GCC 3.7.4 (SuSE Linux)] on linux2 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>>
You can use the Python shell to interactively run Python code. This can be
very useful development and debugging tool. Learn how to use Python’s built-in
dir()
and
help()
introspection functions to dive into Python objects. For example, try running
the following:
>>> import os.path >>> dir(os.path) list of members of os.path module... >>> help(os.path) MAN page-like description of the os.path module... >>> help(os.path.join) help on the join function...
Read the Python Tutorial for more information.
GUI Programming
Tkinter is Python’s binding to the cross-platform Tk GUI toolkit and is a default part of any ActivePython installation on Linux.
wxPython is another popular cross-platform GUI programming toolkit. It is available separately from http://www.wxpython.org/.
As well there are the PyQT and PyGTK bindings to the QT and GTK GUI toolkits, respectively. They are both available separately.