AppsWithPythonScripting

Legacy Wiki Page

This page was migrated from the old MoinMoin-based wiki. Information may be outdated or no longer applicable. For current documentation, see python.org.

Applications can be written almost completely in Python, but people are slow to change, so a considerable number of desktop applications are still written using C/C++ on Linux and Windows and a combination of C++ and Objective-C on Mac OS X. There has been a sustained trend of the use of Python to provide user automation or scripting, sometimes called macros, for C/C++ applications. This makes a lot of sense:

  • Developers don’t have to waste time and money inventing their own scripting language.

  • Users don’t have to learn a new automation language for every application they use, and can use Python books, exampling, and learning resources.

  • Python is a Free Software (Open Source) solution and can be embedded and distributed without charge, so there are no royalty payments or licensing hassles

  • Python is simple to learn, yet Python and its standard libraries are much more powerful than a proprietary language like VBScript

  • Python is cross-platform

  • tools like Cython and BoostPython make it easy to expose part or all of the application programming interface (API)

  • Python scripting can be added to legacy projects just as well as new ones so developers don’t have to abandon their old C/C++ code libraries

  • On the Windows platform, Python has an excellent interface to COM (also known as ActiveX) and can be used to interface to almost any COM program (such as the MS-Office suite). Again, Python scripting can be added to enhance a project without change to the existing COM components. (See Win32All)

  • PyObjC can be used to add scripting to any Cocoa app on Mac OS X

  • Many Mac OS applications provide Apple event-based scripting interfaces, allowing them to be controlled from languages such as AppleScript, JavaScript OSA, Perl (via Mac::Glue), Python (via appscript), Tcl and UserTalk. (See MacPython)

For many of the same reasons, Python is often used as the “glue” language for a project. In the Java world, people are using Jython as the glue and scripting language.

(!) This page is not for listing those applications primarily built with Python. Try Applications for those types of apps, tools, and frameworks.

(!) Please keep wiki links as wiki links, use external links only if there is no existing page for the program.

Applications and Toolkits

Games

Graphics

Tools For Integrating Python

Articles

Other Resources (many apps from pages below need to be copied to this page)

Additional Notes

After adding Panda3D and Open Inventor I’ve started to wonder whether those really qualify as apps the way I originally envisioned this list? Perhaps we should have a separate page for C/C++ libraries, frameworks, etc. that have Python bindings? That would include frameworks like GTK, QT, and WxWidgets which have popular Python bindings. Regardless, all the Python bindings available for popular C/C++ tools and frameworks shows the agility of Python. There are great benefits to adding Python bindings to existing C/C++ (and Java) code bases so that you can leverage the power and flexibility of Python without abandoning an existing code base or giving up the speed of C/C++ code. In these cases, Python is a complement rather than a complete replacement for another programming language. – KevinAltis