[Numpy-discussion] OS X binaries for releases

Russell E. Owen rowen at uw.edu
Fri Aug 23 16:32:29 EDT 2013


In article 
<CAH6Pt5o32Otdhk2Ms5Cy5Zo=Mn48H8X2WbsWK92etUb4MmrooQ at mail.gmail.com>,
 Matthew Brett <matthew.brett at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 12:14 PM, Russell E. Owen <rowen at uw.edu> wrote:
> > In article
> > <CABL7CQjaCXp2GrtT8HVmaYAjRm0xmtn1Qt71WKdnbGq7dLU0cQ at mail.gmail.com>,
> >  Ralf Gommers <ralf.gommers at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Hi all,
> >>
> >> Building binaries for releases is currently quite complex and
> >> time-consuming. For OS X we need two different machines, because we still
> >> provide binaries for OS X 10.5 and PPC machines. I propose to not do this
> >> anymore. It doesn't mean we completely drop support for 10.5 and PPC, just
> >> that we don't produce binaries. PPC was phased out in 2006 and OS X 10.6
> >> came out in 2009, so there can't be a lot of demand for it (and the
> >> download stats at
> >> http://sourceforge.net/projects/numpy/files/NumPy/1.7.1/confirm this).
> >>
> >> Furthermore I propose to not provide 2.6 binaries anymore. Downloads of 2.6
> >> OS X binaries were <5% of the 2.7 ones. We did the same with 2.4 for a long
> >> time - support it but no binaries.
> >>
> >> So what we'd have left at the moment is only the 64-bit/32-bit universal
> >> binary for 10.6 and up. What we finally need to add is 3.x OS X binaries.
> >> We can make an attempt to build these on 10.8 - since we have access to a
> >> hosted 10.8 Mac Mini it would allow all devs to easily do a release
> >> (leaving aside the Windows issue). If anyone has tried the 10.6 SDK on 10.8
> >> and knows if it actually works, that would be helpful.
> >>
> >> Any concerns, objections?
> >
> > I am in strong agreement.
> >
> > I'll be interested to learn how you make binary installers for python
> > 3.x because the standard version of bdist_mpkg will not do it. I have
> > heard of two other projects (forks or variants of bdist_mpkg) that will,
> > but I have no idea of either is supported.
> 
> I think I'm the owner of one of the forks; I supporting it, but I
> should certainly make a release soon too.

That sounds promising. Can you suggest a non-released commit that is 
stable enough to try, or should we wait for a release?

Also, is there a way to combine multiple packages into one binary 
installer? (matplotib used to include python-dateutil, pytz and six, but 
1.3 does not).

> > I have been able to building packages on 10.8 using
> > MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.6 that will run on 10.6, so it will probably
> > work. However I have run into several odd problems over the years
> > building a binary installer on a newer system only to find it won't work
> > on older systems for various reasons. Thus my personal recommendation is
> > that you build on 10.6 if you want an installer that reliably works for
> > 10.6 and later. I keep an older computer around for this reason. In fact
> > that is one good reason to drop support for ancient operating systems
> > and PPC.
> 
> I'm sitting next to a 10.6 machine you are welcome to use; just let me
> know, I'll give you login access.

Thank you. Personally I keep an older laptop I keep around that can run 
10.6 (and even 10.4 and 10.5, which was handy when I made binaries that 
supported 10.3.9 and later -- no need for that these days), so I don't 
need it, but somebody else working on matplotlib binaries might.

-- Russell




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