[Python-Dev] please consider changing --enable-unicode default to ucs4

[M.-A. Lemburg]

Zooko O'Whielacronx wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 20, 2009 at 8:27 AM, Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net> wrote:
>>
>> What "binaries" are you talking about?
> 
> I mean extension modules with native code, which means .so shared
> library files on unix.

Those will not load unless they are for the right UCS-version of
Python. The extensions will give an ImportError if they are
using any Unicode APIs - we go through great lengths in the
Unicode API to make sure that you cannot mix UCS2 and UCS4 APIs.

I'm not exactly sure what you are trying to achieve by making
UCS4 the default... if you build extensions using the system
Python version, distutils will automatically build the right
UCS-version for you.

>> AFAIK, C extensions should fail loading when they have the wrong UCS2/4 setting.
> 
> That would be an improvement!  Unfortunately we instead get mysterious
> misbehavior of the module, e.g.:
> 
> http://bugs.python.org/setuptools/msg309
> http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe/ticket/704#comment:5

Those don't appear to be related to UCS2 vs. UCS4 but rather
some problem with the UTF-8 data those users are trying to load.

The fact that setuptools completely ignores the fact
that Python UCS2 and UCS4 are two different Python builds, is
not really a Python Unicode problem, but one of the setuptools design,
so you should probably complain there.

>> For information, all Mandriva versions I've used until now have had their
>> Python's built with UCS2 (maxunicode == 65535).
> 
> Thank you for the data point.  This means that binary extension
> modules built on Mandriva can't be ported to Ubuntu or vice versa.
> However, is this an argument for or against changing the default
> setting to UCS4?  Changing the default setting wouldn't interfere with
> Mandriva's decision, right?

Depends on what you mean with "ported": of course you can port a
source RPM between UCS2 and UCS4 builds. This just requires a
recompile.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
eGenix.com

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