[Numpy-discussion] Binary releases

[Russell E. Owen]

In article <8E95A257-3F06-43B7-8407-95916D284FE6 at mac.com>,
 William Ray Wing <wrw at mac.com> wrote:

> On 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
> 
> [byte]
> 
> > 	  For Mac there is first the question of OS X versions, (10.5?), 10.6, 
> > 10.7, 10.8. I don't know if some builds work on more than one OS X version. 
> > The 10.5 version is a bit harder to come by than 10.6 and up. It looks like 
> > 10.9 is coming up, but it isn't out yet. I have no idea what Python version 
> > to match up these, but assuming all of them, then
> > 	€ 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?
> > 
> > I don't know what I am doing with the binary stuff, so any suggestions are 
> > welcome.
> 
> 
> If you will forgive an observation from a Mac user and (amateur) developer.  
> I have twice tried to build Numpy from source and both times failed.  The 
> problem was that I couldn't find a single comprehensive set of directions 
> that started from a virgin system (nothing but Apple's python and Xcode) and 
> proceed to working copies of Numpy (and of course Matplotlib).
> 
> Long time users know all about the differences between SourceForge, Github, 
> and such.  But bootstrapping pip, homebrew, macports, and similar was totally 
> opaque to me.
> 
> Sorry for the rant, but what I'm trying to say is that if there were such a 
> recipe and it was clearly pointed to, then the need for a lengthy list of 
> binaries would be pretty much moot.
> 
> Thanks for listening,
> Bill

I sympathize.

Unfortunately it changes all the time so it's hard to keep up to date.

The usual suggestion is to either install a self-contained python 
distribution such as Anaconda, which contains all sorts of useful 
packages, or use the the binary installer (which requires python.org 
python).

For the record: binary installers offer a very important additional 
benefit: the resulting package can be included in an application with 
some assurance about what versions of MacOS X it supports. If you build 
from source you probably have no idea what versions of MacOS X the 
package will support -- which is fine for personal use, but not for 
distribution.

-- Russell