IronPython Studio Installation & Visual Studio 2008 Integration
IronPython Studio is a development IDE for developing IronPython projects based on Visual Studio. It’s like developing web application IDE "Visual Web Developer 2008 Express" for a specific development area. Built on Visual Studio and it’s free.
First of all you shouldn’t install ironpython studio setup directly. You must install some pre-requisites. If you try to install directly after that you get an error
“Cannot find one or more components. Please reinstall the application”. For correcting this mistake,
You should first install Visual Studio 2008 Shell setup. It is available for Visual Studio 2008 Shell, Isolated and Integrated modes. You can install isolated mode from
here about 380MB. After the installation open it from installed directory.
Then install "vs_shell_isolated.enu" setup from installed directory of VS shell isolated mode.
Now we are ready for installation IronPython Studio.
After installation with steps above, now we can run IronPython Studio without any error.
If you are familiar with developing apps in Visual Studio, you can easily develop IronPython project in this environment!
We can develop
Windows Application
Class Library
Console Application
WPF Application apps in IronPython Studio.
But if we wanted to develop “WPF Application“ we got an error. I will introduce how we can solve this problem in next articles.
Introduction to IronPython Studio
Let’s look at integration IronPython Studio into Visual Studio. How it looks like with Visual Studio integration.
As you see there is a IronPython section.
If you are familiar with developing apps in Visual Studio, you can easily develop IronPython project in this environment! We develop Python project which runs on .NET! Coding python on windows is a bit harder especially developing projects with GUIs. On windows there are Qt, BOA constructor IDE’s or on Console tkinter library, wx library for developing GUI elements on Python. But they are too harder! Especially for running projects on windows there are third party apps like “py2exe” to run on windows, it’s too difficult!
It’s over with IronPython… Let’s begin:
First , let’s introduce Visual studio for non-familiar users. See how do we use VS.
Follow File>New>Project then splash a New Project Page and choose IronPython section.
Under this section there are 4 projects type:
Windows Application
Class Library
Console Application
WPF Application
With IronPython we can develop Silverlight, Asp.NET applications, I will introduce how do we develop this apps in next articles…
Then we select Windows Application and for Project Name: ikivanc_Ders1 then following OK. Our project environment will be look like below. We can see parts of our project in the Solution Explorer. There is "From1.py" and "Program.py" files.
As you see there is Design form and other tool panels on in VS 2008. First look at Visual Studio Panels:
ToolBox
We can develop GUI with drag and drop components to add them to our project. To show toolbox Short-Cut is (Ctrl+Alt+X).
Solution Explorer
This tool shows us our project and project tree. Source Code and other project codes. We can edit them with double click. To show Solution Explorer Short-cut is (Ctrl+Alt+S).
Properties
In this panel we can change attributes of Components, Forms and objects on the Forms, without editing code-behind easily. To show Properties short-cut is (F4)
Server Explorer
This panel is for connecting to database. We can do anything about database like creating table, creating stored procedure… To show Sever Explorer short-cut is (Ctrl+Alt+S).
To Run the Application:
To start debugging short-cut is (F5) or on the menu Debug>Start Debugging, If you run without Debugging; Ctrl+F5 or Debug> Start Without Debugging
After Running Application, our project “exe” will be created by Visual Studio. It’s located in our projects directory there is “bin” folder, in “bin” folder there is “Debug” folder which contains our exe file. That’s all!
All The Best!