[Pythonmac-SIG] Versions, Frameworks, Linking, PantherPythonFix

[Bob Ippolito]

On Feb 23, 2005, at 11:53 AM, Roger Binns wrote:

>>> And in the thread on setting PATH, that is exactly what I need to
>>> do since the code is cross platform.
>> Not really, the only point that matters is when you run "python 
>> setup.py py2app".  It doesn't matter what the #! line is in your main 
>> script or setup.py -- unless of course your setup.py is +x and you 
>> start it as an executable, but I don't think that's very common.
>
> It matters all the rest of the time as well since I also do 
> development!
> I run the main program as well as many other files (if 
> __name__=='__main__')
> and having to type the correct path each time would be a pain.
>
>>> I actually can't see *any* benefit to me at all of Apple's Python.
>> The largest benefit is that you can get binary packages of stuff that 
>> work with it.
>
> There are exactly two binary packages I care about.  One is readline
> and the other is wxPython which you discuss.  On Windows the installers
> for binary packages read the locations of installed Pythons from
> the registry and everything works so smoothly.

It can't do that with a Python linked for 10.2 or extensions compiled 
without PythonPantherFix unless there is a post-process that rewrites 
the Mach-O load commands.  The py2app machinery is capable of this, but 
I don't really have the need to support alternate installation 
locations so I'm not going to write that code.

>>> Are there any instructions anywhere on how to remove Apple's
>>> version, and put on an official Python.org blessed version and
>>> ensure the latter resides somewhere on my path?
>> Do not, under any circumstance, remove anything Apple put on your 
>> machine.  Unless you REALLY know what you're doing.
>
> One of the web pages said it was an optional install, keyed of 
> selecting
> some other package.  So I take it by your comment that they don't
> use some sort of packaging system that allows removing packages
> for Python.

The "optional" package that Python comes in is the BSD package.  Not 
installation that package is bad news.  Python being optional is a bug, 
since they use it in their own stuff.  It probably won't be optional in 
future versions of Mac OS X.

> Taking a step back, am I the only person who thinks the Python 
> situation
> on Mac is absolutely ridiculous, although 10.2 looks better than 10.3.
> All I want is one up to date version of Python on my system, and have
> binary and source extensions just work.  This is what it is like on
> Windows and Linux.

As I've said before, the 10.2 stuff works just fine in 10.3.  You 
obviously have no idea how bad the vendor Python was in 10.2 -- believe 
it or not, 10.3 was a major improvement :)

-bob