[Pythonmac-SIG] building extension problems on OS X python 2.5.1

[Christopher Barker]

James Boyle wrote:
> It appears that the builds attempt to make a universal binary by  
> default  and attempt to link to a library that I have built as i386  
> only.

Yes, that does appear to be your problem.

The whole point of distutils is to make it easy to build extensions that 
match the Python you're using, and you're using a Universal Python.

You have three choices:

1) Best (but maybe most difficult) option:

learn to build your libs as Universal -- then you can contribute these 
packages to pythonmac.org for others to use.

2) figure how to force distutils to build only i386. I think this 
requires messing with the Python Makefile. There was some discussion 
here about this not too long ago, I think you'll find it if you search 
the archives.

3) Build an i386 only Python, then use that to build your extensions. If 
you're running only on your own machine, then there's no harm in this. I 
think that was covered in the previous discussion as well.

> These libraries HDF5 and netCDF4 have fairly complex build scripts.

They do, but there are others that would love to see them ready-to-use 
for Universal Python!

> I would like to be able to turn off the mechanism that is forcing a  
> universal build. The PPC part is a waste of space for me.

Yes, but space is cheap -- that's why I called option 1 the best option.

-Chris





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