New standalone builds for Linux, macOS and Windows

Hello folks!

I know it was sometimes difficult to use Rivalcfg because installing it from sources requires using unusual tools for those who are not Python developers (venv, pip, etc.). It is even worse on Windows where you have to install Python first as it is not part of the system.

That's why I am glad to announce the brand new standalone builds of Rivalcfg that have been requested one year and a half ago! Standalone builds are compiled versions of Rivalcfg you can run without installing any dependencies. You only have to download an archive (.tar.gz for Linux, .zip for Windows) or a disk image (.dmg) for macOS and extract the files from it. That's it!

Standalone releases of Rivalcfg for Linux, macOS and Windows

For Windows users that may be less used to the command line, I added a help message and a pause in the execution of the program if Rivalcfg is run without arguments, which is the case when you double-click on the executable. This is to avoid having just a "flashing" terminal window that closes immediately, which may be interpreted as "it does not work".

Standalone version of Rivalcfg on Windows

I did not want to wait for the next Rivalcfg version to bring the standalone builds to folks who wanted to use them, so I released standalone builds for the last Rivalcfg version (v4.16.0). I flagged them as "experimental" as they are brand new. Do not hesitate to open an issue on GitHub if you find a bug.

Please note that it is known that the --print-debug option is broken on those builds, and probably on the "regular" v4.16.0 version too, since I removed the dependency on setuptools, this will be fixed in the next release.

On a more technical note, those builds are made with a Python compiler named Nuitka. The Linux and macOS versions are compiled with Python 3.14, which brings a beautifully colored help output. The Windows version, however, use Python 3.13 as it crashes with Python 3.14 (this Python version is still experimentally supported by Nuitka).

Rivalcfg colored help output (Rival 100)

Along with this new way to distribute Rivalcfg, I added a "download" page on the website that references the standalone builds, and I updated the install documentation to make things simpler.

See you in a month or two for the next Rivalcfg release! 😄️