Python everywhere, even on iPhone & iPad !!!

For connoisseurs of GNU / Linux It is not a secret of the potentialities of Python (see Python success stories), not by choice it came out like the Most used programming language in 2010, and it is certainly that its advantages are multiple and undeniable.

Today I read a piece of news that is certainly attractive. It happens that a user of our community (Christopher) achieved that applications 100% Python worked without problems in iOSHere is a translation of his article:

I recently had the opportunity to do some research with the goal of running Python on any device iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod touch). The idea is just to write some code Python and port it to different platforms without changing anything at all (Eg Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Android, iOS)

If you're interested, here is a draft which on a somewhat high (technical) but easy to understand level, sums up what needs to be done.

Now, I'm not saying that this is THE way to develop cross-platform software, especially for devices like tablets. My goal was only to see if it was technically possible and feasible to write applications for iOS using solely and exclusively Python. Fortunately, it seems that it is possible and actually the programs run quite fast. Also, use the GPU to render using OpenGL ES 2.0, so no jailbreak is necessary.

Consider this work in progress. There are still many things on the to-do list (EVERYTHING), I just wanted to share the early / early results with you and let you know that it is indeed possible, possible to run applications purely Python en iOS. The code is in GitHub (links below) and I'm using the framework discouraged.

I am looking for opportunities to present this in much more depth in a class or conference. If any of you know of an opportunity, please send me an email (the address is in the PDF).

Links:

• Python repo for iOS (builds Pytho 2.7 for ARM)
• Kivy iOS support
• C app test target incorporating Python and running a Kivy example
• They will also need SDL 1.3

Last but not least, I would like to repeat what I wrote in the PDF, for which I thank my friend Mathieu Virbel (from the Kivy team) for all his help. I really enjoyed the hack section we had at UDS.

And here the article ends.

Give you a true and deep «Thank you" at Christopher for his work, it really inspires.