[Python-Dev] OS X Installer for 3.0.1 and supported versions

["Martin v. Löwis"]

> A single installer could support both 32-bit on 10.4 and 64-bit on 
> 10.5, but I don't think that's very useful because there are changes 
> in the low-level unix API's that could result in different behaviour
> of a 32-bit and 64-bit script on the same system. In general 10.5 has
> much saner Unix API's than earlier releases.

I don't get that. Why would the scripts behave differently on 10.5
depending on whether the Python interpreter is 32-bit or 64-bit?
Surely, the Unix API does the same thing, whether invoked from 32-bit
code, or 64-bit code, no?

>> I still wish there were 10.3+ installers that also include 64-bit
>> code. I don't get it why that can't be technically possible.
> 
> The problem with 10.3 support is that we need volunteers to actually 
> investigate and fix issues that only occur on 10.3 systems. I cannot
> be that volunteer because I no longer have access to systems that are
>  capable of running 10.3.

I don't think it is necessary to actually test whether the binaries
work on 10.3; I don't test the Windows installers on Windows 2000,
either. For me, it's good enough if we believe that the installer
"should" work on 10.3.

Then, if somebody reports a problem, we can still consider what to do.
If there are no reports, it either means there are no problems, or
nobody uses it, or nobody bothers reporting the problems.

> That said, the difference between a binary capable of running on
> 10.4+ and one running 10.3+ is minimal. I introduced weak-linking for
> a number of symbols that are not present on 10.3.9 in the 2.5
> timeframe and that could should continue to work in the future. I
> won't notice when someone introduces additional calls to functions
> not available on 10.3 though.

Sounds good to me!

Regards,
Martin