[Numpy-discussion] Binary releases

[Russell E. Owen]

In article 
<CABL7CQg5vV_Vnp0hbdX+ys6Gt0nPWqehTH3mWb6j65OW9+13aA at mail.gmail.com>,
 Ralf Gommers <ralf.gommers at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Sep 16, 2013 at 2:45 AM, <josef.pktd at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > On Sun, Sep 15, 2013 at 9:04 PM, Charles R Harris
> > <charlesr.harris at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Hi All,
> > >
> > > Numpy 1.8 is about ready for an rc1, which brings up the question of
> > which
> > > binary builds so put up on sourceforge. For Windows maybe
> > >...
> > > OS X 10.6  python 2.6, 2.7, 3.2, 3.3, compiled with native compiler,
> > linked
> > > with Accelerate.
> > > OS X 10.7  python 2.6, 2.7, 3.2, 3.3, compiled with native compiler,
> > linked
> > > with Accelerate.
> > > OS X 10.8  python 2.6, 2.7, 3.2, 3.3, compiled with native compiler,
> > linked
> > > with Accelerate.
> > >
> > > That seems like a lot. It is fairly easy to compile from source on the
> > mac
> > > these days, are all those binary packages really needed?
> >
> 
> That's not exactly the right list - the same installers built on 10.6 also
> work on 10.7 and 10.8.

I agree. I'll chime in and give my recommendations, though Ralf is the 
expert:

For MacOS X I suggest building binary installers for python.org's python 
2.7, 3.2 and 3.3 (the 64-bit versions). The result will run on 10.6 and 
later. It is safest to build these on MacOS X 10.6; it may work to build 
on a later MacOS X, but it sure doesn't for some packages.

You will have to update to the latest bdist_mpkg to build Mac binary 
installers for python 3. I've not tried it yet.

I don't think users expect a binary installer for Apple's python; I 
don't recall ever seeing these for numpy, scipy, matplotlib.... But if 
you do want to supply one, Apple provides Python 2.5, 2.6 and 2.7 but no 
3.x (at least in MacOS X 10.8).

-- Russell