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

[Ned Deily]

In article <878wo8swxe.fsf at xemacs.org>,
 "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen at xemacs.org> wrote:
> Guido van Rossum writes:
> 
>  > Actually I expect that to be fairly common among people who are not so
>  > much into technology, strapped for funds but appreciative of quality,
>  > bought an expensive Mac once expecting it would last a long time, and
>  > are hanging on to it until it dies (which could be a long time). Their
>  > hardware may not support newer OS X versions.
> 
> I'm quite familiar with that.  Thing is, although I still have a
> Panther box running, I gave up on updating *anything* on it when
> Leopard came out, because I had to spend too much time fighting with
> bitrot in packages which stopped working after upgrades on my Tiger
> box, let alone on Panther.  The Panther box still does the stuff that
> I want it to do, but it isn't going to learn any new tricks, I'm
> afraid.
> 
> If that is a more general phenomenon, I have to wonder whether people
> with old Macs with old OSes are going to be all that interested in
> shiny new Pythons.
> 
> I think that the extra effort of building an extra installer for 10.4
> will be well-repaid in better support for 10.5 users, and the option
> of abandoning the 10.4 installer in a few months if it doesn't get
> very many downloads.

You mentioned MacPorts earlier.  FWIW, here's their position on version 
support:

"We provide a single software tree that attempts to track the latest 
release of every software title (port) we distribute, without splitting 
them into "stable" Vs. "unstable" branches, targetting mainly the 
current Mac OS X release (10.5, A.K.A Leopard) and the immediately 
previous one (10.4, A.K.A. Tiger)."

And Fink, the other major open-source package provider for OS X, is even 
more explicit:

"The Fink project is no longer able to offer support for users of Fink 
on Mac OS X 10.3. In reality there has been very little support for some 
time, so this announcement simply formalizes that fact.
This means that there will not be any further updates, not even security 
updates, for Mac OS X 10.3 users. Their existing installations will 
continue to work, but the software that is installed will not be updated.
We believe that the majority of our users are using Mac OS X 10.4 or 
10.5 and hope that this does not inconvenience too many people."

-- 
 Ned Deily,
 nad at acm.org