Python on 64-bit AIX
Hi everybody, I've noted some discussion about Python on 64-bit platforms on this mailing list lately. The reason I'm posting is that I am currently installing a Python 1.5 interpreter at a client's site which is running AIX 4.3.2 on a 2-processor PowerPC machine. It will use my mx Extensions as add-ons. The compiler used is gcc 2.95.1. Linking is done with the AIX linker. Since I can't possibly check all situations where this setup might fail, I would like to know if anybody else has made some experience with similar setups. Python does compile (I had to disable the fcntl module though) and seems to run fine. My mx Extensions also compile and import properly, but I haven't run any extended tests yet. Has Python already been tested extensively on 64-bit machines ? Thanks for any hints, -- Marc-Andre Lemburg ______________________________________________________________________ Business: http://www.lemburg.com/ Python Pages: http://www.lemburg.com/python/
Has Python already been tested extensively on 64-bit machines ?
python works perfectly fine on the AXP platform (and has done so since 1.2, at least). should work fine on any LP64 platform. (given good enough compilers, that is. we don't use gcc on AXP -- earlier gcc's didn't work well, and DEC's own tools are not only excellent, but they're also shipped with the OS) </F>
Fredrik Lundh writes:
That depends on the OS, doesn't it? ;) I doubt RedHat for the alpha ships DEC compilers, and I understand that Linux is selling more AXP chips than Tru64 Unix (as it's called these days). -Fred -- Fred L. Drake, Jr. <fdrake at acm.org> Corporation for National Research Initiatives
Fred L. Drake, Jr. <fdrake@acm.org> wrote:
yeah, but serious developers use DEC C also on Linux: http://www.unix.digital.com/linux/compaq_c/index.html </F>
Fredrik Lundh writes:
yeah, but serious developers use DEC C also on Linux: http://www.unix.digital.com/linux/compaq_c/index.html
Cool! This is good to know. -Fred -- Fred L. Drake, Jr. <fdrake at acm.org> Corporation for National Research Initiatives
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/nextgen/language.asp New object oriented programming features: Inheritance Encapsulation Overloading Polymorphism Parameterized Constructors Additional modernized language features: Free Threading Structured Exception Handling Type Safety Shared Members Initializers </F>
Fredrik Lundh [fredrik@pythonware.com] wrote:
I think this is an important ote. GCC has some serious flaws in its 64-bit support on various platforms (and I don't believe supports PowerII/III and the 64 bit architecture). My experience has been that on AXP, PPC and POWER systems that the vendor compilers are not only more reliable, but substantially faster (on POWER, it's 50% or more in many cases). The joy with AIX compilers is in finding the right combination of switches to get it doing what you want. Start with 'c98' rather than 'cc' and you'll be much happier :-) Chris -- | Christopher Petrilli | petrilli@amber.org
Christopher Petrilli wrote:
Well, it does seem to compile linkable programs and I even got Python and my extensions all running. I would have liked to use the native OS compilers but the client has a rather strange attitude towards: the argument is to use GNU tools out- side the firewall and AIX tools on the inside -- no idea what this buys for him, but that's the reason why I'm stuck to gcc and a few undefined symbols in some libs :-( Thanks for your comments, -- Marc-Andre Lemburg ______________________________________________________________________ Business: http://www.lemburg.com/ Python Pages: http://www.lemburg.com/python/
On Wed, 16 Feb 2000, M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
... Has Python already been tested extensively on 64-bit machines ?
Back in 1996, Microsoft used Python 1.4 on Alpha machines for the Microsoft Merchant Server 1.0 product. The thing was seriously stress-tested and code coverage was applied to the Python source (not the C interpreter!). It ran quite well for us. Any 64-bit issues that we found were sent to Mark/Guido long ago. In 1997, we shipped Site Server 2.0; the Commerce Server portion used Python to implement some COM objects. Again: that was well-tested on Alpha machines. In 1998, when Site Server 3.0 came out, the use of Python was quite minimal by that point, and the Alpha testing was also minimal. We used a Python 1.4 base for all three product releases. The Site Server products also had my "free threading patches" applied, and used a snapshot of the win32com stuff to implement the COM stuff. Of course, we didn't use all of Python. The particular subset that we used worked great. So... Your Mileage May Vary. Cheers, -g -- Greg Stein, http://www.lyra.org/
Greg Stein wrote:
What I'm particularly interested in is the socket module, which is being used rather heavily for inter process communication. Anyway, your comments do sound promising -- after all Python 1.5.x has gone a long way since the release of Python 1.4. Thanks for the Good News ;-), -- Marc-Andre Lemburg ______________________________________________________________________ Business: http://www.lemburg.com/ Python Pages: http://www.lemburg.com/python/
Has Python already been tested extensively on 64-bit machines ?
python works perfectly fine on the AXP platform (and has done so since 1.2, at least). should work fine on any LP64 platform. (given good enough compilers, that is. we don't use gcc on AXP -- earlier gcc's didn't work well, and DEC's own tools are not only excellent, but they're also shipped with the OS) </F>
Fredrik Lundh writes:
That depends on the OS, doesn't it? ;) I doubt RedHat for the alpha ships DEC compilers, and I understand that Linux is selling more AXP chips than Tru64 Unix (as it's called these days). -Fred -- Fred L. Drake, Jr. <fdrake at acm.org> Corporation for National Research Initiatives
Fred L. Drake, Jr. <fdrake@acm.org> wrote:
yeah, but serious developers use DEC C also on Linux: http://www.unix.digital.com/linux/compaq_c/index.html </F>
Fredrik Lundh writes:
yeah, but serious developers use DEC C also on Linux: http://www.unix.digital.com/linux/compaq_c/index.html
Cool! This is good to know. -Fred -- Fred L. Drake, Jr. <fdrake at acm.org> Corporation for National Research Initiatives
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/nextgen/language.asp New object oriented programming features: Inheritance Encapsulation Overloading Polymorphism Parameterized Constructors Additional modernized language features: Free Threading Structured Exception Handling Type Safety Shared Members Initializers </F>
Fredrik Lundh [fredrik@pythonware.com] wrote:
I think this is an important ote. GCC has some serious flaws in its 64-bit support on various platforms (and I don't believe supports PowerII/III and the 64 bit architecture). My experience has been that on AXP, PPC and POWER systems that the vendor compilers are not only more reliable, but substantially faster (on POWER, it's 50% or more in many cases). The joy with AIX compilers is in finding the right combination of switches to get it doing what you want. Start with 'c98' rather than 'cc' and you'll be much happier :-) Chris -- | Christopher Petrilli | petrilli@amber.org
Christopher Petrilli wrote:
Well, it does seem to compile linkable programs and I even got Python and my extensions all running. I would have liked to use the native OS compilers but the client has a rather strange attitude towards: the argument is to use GNU tools out- side the firewall and AIX tools on the inside -- no idea what this buys for him, but that's the reason why I'm stuck to gcc and a few undefined symbols in some libs :-( Thanks for your comments, -- Marc-Andre Lemburg ______________________________________________________________________ Business: http://www.lemburg.com/ Python Pages: http://www.lemburg.com/python/
On Wed, 16 Feb 2000, M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
... Has Python already been tested extensively on 64-bit machines ?
Back in 1996, Microsoft used Python 1.4 on Alpha machines for the Microsoft Merchant Server 1.0 product. The thing was seriously stress-tested and code coverage was applied to the Python source (not the C interpreter!). It ran quite well for us. Any 64-bit issues that we found were sent to Mark/Guido long ago. In 1997, we shipped Site Server 2.0; the Commerce Server portion used Python to implement some COM objects. Again: that was well-tested on Alpha machines. In 1998, when Site Server 3.0 came out, the use of Python was quite minimal by that point, and the Alpha testing was also minimal. We used a Python 1.4 base for all three product releases. The Site Server products also had my "free threading patches" applied, and used a snapshot of the win32com stuff to implement the COM stuff. Of course, we didn't use all of Python. The particular subset that we used worked great. So... Your Mileage May Vary. Cheers, -g -- Greg Stein, http://www.lyra.org/
Greg Stein wrote:
What I'm particularly interested in is the socket module, which is being used rather heavily for inter process communication. Anyway, your comments do sound promising -- after all Python 1.5.x has gone a long way since the release of Python 1.4. Thanks for the Good News ;-), -- Marc-Andre Lemburg ______________________________________________________________________ Business: http://www.lemburg.com/ Python Pages: http://www.lemburg.com/python/
participants (6)
-
Christopher Petrilli -
Fred L. Drake, Jr. -
Fredrik Lundh -
Fredrik Lundh -
Greg Stein -
M.-A. Lemburg