[Numpy-discussion] OS X binaries for releases

[Matthew Brett]

Hi,

On Fri, Aug 23, 2013 at 1:32 PM, Russell E. Owen <rowen at uw.edu> wrote:
> 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?

It has hardly changed since the Python 3 port - the current head
should be fine, I'm using it for our installers.  But I will get to a
release soon.

> 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).

Well - yes - by hacking.  I did something like this to make huge
scientific python installer for a course I'm teaching:

https://github.com/matthew-brett/reginald

Basically, you build the mpkg files for each thing you want to
install, then copy the sub-packages from the mpkg into a mpkg
megapackage (see the README for what I mean).

I should really automate this better - it was pretty easy to build a
large and useful distribution this way.

Cheers,

Matthew