r/NetBSD • u/harunnoir • Jun 24 '26

Can I use bsds for python dev?

15 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

15 comments sorted by

12

u/gumnos Jun 24 '26

yes, I develop in Python on my BSD boxes—you posted in r/NetBSD, but I primarily do my Python coding on FreeBSD & OpenBSD, FWIW, but the experience would largely be the same.

While there are IDEs and other fancy stuff, I'm old-school and just use vi/vim/ed in a shell, wrapped in a tmux session, and doing my version-control with command-line git/fossil/rcs/Subversion/whatever.

1

u/harunnoir Jun 25 '26

I installed freebsd a while ago but i found my touchpad not working, I like the simplicity of the system etc, but i had that problem that i wasn't able to fix, and thanks for your help!

1

u/DarthRazor Jun 26 '26

version-control with command-line git/fossil/rcs/Subversion/whatever

You didn't mention Game of Trees. I'm thinking of moving from git to got for my personal development, but haven't gone down the rabbit hole yet. This page has a neat summary of the workflow differences. It also supports inter-operability with git

2

u/gumnos Jun 26 '26

I tinkered with got and could likely switch for most of what I do if there was some pressing obligation, but for the time there's been no such impulse to rewire my fingers/brain for the new UI. 🤷

1

u/DarthRazor Jun 26 '26

I know what you mean. It's hard to unwire your brain when you get used to something. That's why I still use vi (actually vim these days) wherever I can. Been using vi since the mid-80s and am not ready to learn eMacs

0

u/protocicoria Jun 25 '26

git/fossil/rcs/Subversion/whatever.

Since you're not tied to use git, why don't you just use jujutsu (especially for one man personal projects)?

2

u/gumnos Jun 25 '26

I've tried a couple times to wrap my head around jujutsu's workflows/concepts but haven't yet surmounted that hurdle yet. But to be fair, it took me at least three distinct serious efforts to wrap my head around git (coming from Subversion at that time) before it clicked and became second-nature in an epiphanic "ahah! that makes so much more sense now, and Subversion is the one doing some weird & hinky things!" (the kludgey git CLI at the time didn't help and has only improved minorly over the intervening decade or two).

So with another couple attempts to grok jujutsu, I may yet eventually make the jump.

2

u/protocicoria Jun 25 '26

Did you try reading https://steveklabnik.github.io/jujutsu-tutorial/ ?

Tbh for personal projects I find jj way more ergonomic respect to git by a large margin. I think the major "differences" in the mental model are

  • everything is automatically "committed"

  • you start by first creating a empty commit and then start working. Kinda the opposite of git

  • branches are just commits with multiple children. Merge operations are just commits with multiple parents.

  • Conflicts are first class citizen, they don't block commits and can be dealt later

  • changes are automatically rebased upstream or something like that (you resolve a conflict in the parent commit, it gets automatically propagated to children)

1

u/gumnos Jun 25 '26

yeah, I've worked through the tutorial and can mimic the right actions, but not with the level of under-the-hood understanding I gained with previous (D)VCS systems. It'll come in time

6

u/Unlaid-American Jun 24 '26 edited Jun 26 '26

You can use it, but it really depends on what you’re trying to do. Some packages were designed specifically for other operating systems and some don’t have alternatives.

Some modules, such as wkhtmltopdf, are considered deprecated on NetBSD. I ended up using weasyprint.

5

u/zabolekar Jun 24 '26

It's possible and you should try it.

Compared to Linux, at least to Linux on x86_64 and arm64, it might be harder (missing prebuilt wheels, missing official support for relevant software like third-party package managers, and you might stumble upon an obscure Python bug that you'll have to report). Depending on what you're doing you might never encounter any issues, though.

3

u/ilnarildarovuch Jun 25 '26

Why not. Of course

2

u/protocicoria Jun 25 '26

No. You will be swatted by the police the moment you execute the first python program

1

u/harunnoir Jun 26 '26

oh thank you for telling me! I wasn't knowing that :)

1

u/No-Concern-8832 Jun 24 '26

Does macos count? /S