Let py5 help people install the JDK?

[villares]

I'm hearing some reports from people who know Python, and are not willing to use Thonny (because they are already used to other IDEs) strugling to install py5...

Do you think it would be reasonable to add install-jdk as a dependency to py5, so that we could have some clever features?

• A very ambitious idea: catch the failure to start the JVM and ask to try and install a JDK.
• A less ambitious idea: a CLI tool to install the JDK, maybe something like py5-install-jdk
• A third idea: from py5_tools import setup_jdk; setup_jdk()

[hx2A]

Sure, we should add support to simplify installing the JDK. We can't catch the JVM start failure and install the JDK but we can improve the error message to direct someone to the other options.

I wouldn't want to add install-jdk as a required dependency but we can add it as an optional one and include it in the extras group. And the code can detect when it is not installed and ask the user to install it when needed.

The second and third ideas are feasible, so let's work on that for a future release. I will create an issue for this so we track it.

[GoToLoop]

... and include it in the extras group.

Maybe create an extended group for it?

[hx2A]

Why create a new (third) group for this? I'd rather include it in one of the existing ones.

[GoToLoop]

True! install-jdk is already a dependency for the addon. But no problem having it as an [extra] on py5 as well.

[villares]

Back to this idea...
I wish we could have this (I know it is kind of a tall ask to make this work on all platforms):

pip install py5
python -m py5_tools config-jdk   

This would check if there is a suitable java available, install install-jdk and install a JDK if needed.

[hx2A]

Back to this idea... I wish we could have this (I know it is kind of a tall ask to make this work on all platforms):

pip install py5
python -m py5_tools config-jdk   

This would check if there is a suitable java available, install install-jdk and install a JDK if needed.

This sounds achievable and I don't think the code would be platform specific. I'll open an issue for it and start working on it.

[villares]

I'm doing some testing on the new feature and keeping records here:

https://gist.github.com/villares/e040c3b39baf10712d1f91540fbdd7dc