How all this started

Well for some time now I'm using some portable applications (Firefox, Thunderbird, Gaim, etc...) and when I started to play around with Django I noticed question on one of the Django mailing lists about making Django development portable and can it be done with Movable Python. It sounded quite interesting to me too but when I saw that you can get Movable Python only after you pay for it I started to think how to make "Django on a (USB) stick".

After few tests I realized that it is not that difficult to make Python portable so I started thinking why not go all the way and make "Python on a stick" and that is how that idea was born. All the rest was a bit Python programming to create portable script runner application and to configure my favorite Python editor SciTE to run from portable device and to use Portable Python.

Current status

Portable Python is beta software and it will probably always be beta software. I get lots of questions about "how stable it really is" ? Well every release goes through very serious testing process on at least 4 different versions of Windows. And it is also being tested by small group of core users before it is released in the public. After all gmail is also beta and we all use and enjoy it for years now.

Right now it supports three versions of Python 2.5.4, 2.6.1 and 3.0.1 and lots of packages. SPE and PyScripter are also included as they are right now best free editors for Python scripts. They include code hightlighting, code completion, remote/local debugging, script execution with or without parameters etc etc.

Python script runner script which was included in the first release is removed since editors included in this release offer much more flexible and powerful ways to run/debug Python scripts.

Future plans

Like you all expect it will be more stable, more packages, more editors, configurable, super flexible-state of the art project :-)

But that is not the final target I want to reach. What I would like to do is to give Portable Python to all those young minds on the world for free. To go with hundreds of memory sticks to schools, universities and to give them good and stable portable development environment - for FREE. Lets be honest, our future depends on the knowledge of those young people and what better way to invest in our future but to provide them with a tool to learn, develop, experiment.

Welcome to my dream. Help me make it reality.