Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Re: percentage of vim users running python

On Tue, Jun 29, 2010 at 6:32 PM, AK <andrei.avk@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 06/29/2010 09:20 PM, Ted wrote:
> > I'm wondering if there are some figures somewhere that would provide
> > some sort of estimate of the percentage of vim users who have python
> > installed, or would be free of objections to installing it if a module
> > required it.  I'm working on some vim modules, to be released for
> > general use, that are threatening to become pretty complicated, and
> > would prefer to write them in python.  Is it likely that this would
> > lock out a significant portion of the vim user population?  Is it
> > frowned upon to use external languages in cases where it's not
> > entirely necessary?  Python is more or less ubiquitous on linux
> > installs, but I don't feel like I could guess at how many vim users on
> > other platforms would be unable or unwilling to install it.
> >
> > The modules themselves are relatively general purpose; my motivation
> > to code them in Python stems partly from this very generality: it's
> > advantageous to have that code available outside of the context of
> > vim.  I also find that I tend more and more toward a functional
> > programming style that doesn't work particularly well in vimscript.
>
> Do you mean Vim compiled with python or just python installed on the
> system? If I understand right, windown installer for Vim comes with
> python compiled into Vim. Same goes for Vim in Ubuntu. On other
> distributions, I'm not sure, I believe I heard that Redhat's Vim does
> not have Python compiled in.
>
> If you're using python from Vim, it might make sense to use compiled in
> interpreter because there's closer integration with Vim rather than
> outside interpreter. If you haven't done this already, read :help python.

The Windows build refers to a Python DLL and will load it if it can find
it. However, Python itself is not included with Windows Vim and must be
separately installed. It must also be the same version of Python (e.g.,
python26.dll) and the DLL must be in the search path, :h python-dynamic

The average Vim user on Windows is, I suppose, somewhat likely to already
have Python, and, if not, will likely be amenable to installing it
-- especially if it gets them some useful Vim extensions.
But this is all supposition; I know of no way to get meaningful numbers on this.
--
/George V. Reilly  george@reilly.org  Twitter: @georgevreilly
http://www.georgevreilly.com/blog  http://blogs.cozi.com/tech

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