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

["Martin v. Löwis"]

Ronald Oussoren wrote:
> 
> On 14 Feb, 2009, at 19:04, Martin v. Löwis wrote:
> 
>>> 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 should have been more clear: the unix API for code that runs on
> 10.4 is slightly different than that for code that runs on 10.5+, Apple
> basiclly fixed a number of UNIX API-compliance issues in 10.5.

So how come? Are you really saying that 10.5 somehow knows whether the
code might also run on 10.4, and if so, deliberately behaves
differently?

So that a Python interpreter compiled for 10.4+ would behave differently
on a specific 10.5 installation than a Python interpreter compiled for
10.5+, on the very same system?

If so, I'm -1 on providing two sets of binaries for the same Python
version (one in 10.4+ mode and one in 10.5+ mode). Otherwise, this
sounds like a good source of confusion: "are you using Python 3.1
as compiled for 10.4 or 3.1 as compiled for 10.5?" - "well, how
do I tell?"

Is this Apple's DLL hell?

Regards,
Martin