Running PyTide

At present, if you don’t have git, you can still download PyTide here. On Mac and Linux it should basically run, such as it is, out of the box. The dependencies are pretty common stuff. On Windows, you will need to go through some install agony because that stuff doesn’t come standard (one of many reasons it’s a horrible platform to develop on). You’ll need to install Python, possibly GTK, pyGTK, Webkit (included in Safari and Chrome) or Firefox, and maybe some other stuff. If it sounds like a nightmare, that’s only because it is, which is also why I haven’t personally tested it on Windows at all. I’m a developer, not a masochist.

Don’t worry, we will be using compile-Python-for-Windows tools to make regular, easy-to-run executables, at points where the program is relatively stable on Linux and Mac, so you can give it a test run.

To run PyTide, download it from the link above and extract the archive into a folder. It doesn’t matter where. Depending on the specifics of your OS, you can probably run PyTide by double-clicking on app.py, but if not, open a terminal, navigate to the extracted folder (if you’re not familiar with bash terminals, you’re going to use “cd” to Change Directory, and “ls” to List Stuff inside the current folder), and when you get there, type in “python app.py” and hit enter. This process is one of many things that will get significantly less awful in major releases, as opposed to the development versions in between them.

In order to log into PyTide, you need to make an account at PyTideWave, which will bridge the gap between Google authentication and us. You’ll get instructions when you get there, so I’d rather not spelunk into the details here. More account controls are coming eventually, but for now, the site is just a barebones account server for a very specific and limited purpose. It should get you an account, which you can use to log into PyTide, and not much more.

Once running, be advised that you can expect the program to be a little bit fragile. This is an extremely early work in progress at the time of this writing, so brace yourself for funny bugs. We make no guarantees of any kind except that running this program will in no way affect your reproductive fertility. However, we don’t use dangerous libraries and such that could mess up your system, so it’s unlikely that anything bad will happen that causes damage outside the scope of the program. Please try to post bugs here… or if that requires a github account and you don’t feel like making one, email it directly to me at [email protected]. Please include the word PyTide somewhere in your outraged complaints, so that I can filter it to my PyTide folder and not have bug reports clog up my inbox. This is my personal email address. Be nice.