[Python-Dev] Fwd: Broken link to download (Mac OS X)

Ronald Oussoren ronaldoussoren at mac.com
Sun Apr 18 16:22:41 CEST 2010


On 15 Apr, 2010, at 0:12, Zvezdan Petkovic wrote:

> On Apr 14, 2010, at 4:40 PM, Martin v. Löwis wrote:
> 
>>> I think you just need to supply to configure
>>> 
>>> MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.4
>>> 
>>> and have the appropriate SDK installed with Xcode.
>> 
>> Wouldn't that break 10.3 compatibility (seel below)?
> 
> 
> I was replying to your point about 10.4 build.
> Naturally, if you want a 10.3 build you'd pass 10.3 as the target and would have to have appropriate Xcode SDK installed.

You don't have to install an SDK to be able to build binaries that run on older versions. The reason the binary installer gets build with the 10.4u SDK is that the default compiler on OSX 10.4 cannot build universal binaries without that SDK.

> 
> 
>>>> Unfortunately, Apple manages to break compatibility and portability
>>>> with every release, which makes this particular build task soooo
>>>> tricky. You have to make all kinds of decisions and compromises
>>>> where are really difficult to keep track of.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Hmm.  Apple provided compatibility SDK and documented it.
>>> 
>>> The only compromise I see in this build process right now is that we
>>> are building a Panther (10.3) compatible installer, while Mac OS X is
>>> a certified UNIX starting with 10.5.
>> 
>> I think there are more issues. People want a fat binary that supports
>> AMD64 along with x86, yet building such a binary requires an SDK that
>> won't support PPC anymore - right?
> 
> Yes.

No. It is possible to build a binary that supports ppc, ppc64, x86 and x86_64, and that's even possible using a single additional configure switch. That binary will require OSX 10.5 to run though due to using symbols that aren't available on earlier versions of OSX (thanks to the better UNIX API compatibility in 10.5).

PPC64 is not supported on OSX 10.6 though.

> 
> x86_64, i386, and ppc are supported even in the Xcode supplied with the latest Mac OS X 10.6.  Only ppc64 is not.  So, ppc is not an issue.
> 
> The problem is that enforcing backward compatibility with 10.3 and 10.4 makes 64-bit Intel architecture not feasible.
> 
> You are right, it is a compromise.
> We are making more users happy by providing a 32-bit installer for a wider range of OS releases.
> 
> However, if we want a more modern certified UNIX, 64-bit installer, then we'll have to draw a line and stop supporting older OS releases.
> 
> Just as we stop supporting older releases of Python.

I want to provide 2 installers for Python 2.7 and 3.2:

1) The current 32-bit only installer that runs on OSX 10.3 or later

2) An installer that supports ppc, x86 and x86_64 and requires OSX 10.5 or later

The latter would be the one that most users would want to use. Note that the second installer does not support ppc64 and three reasons: (1) PPC64 is a dead end on OSX, (2) libffi has issues on darwin/ppc64 that probably affect ctypes and (3) I do not have regular access to ppc64 machines and can therefore not provide any support for that platform.

Ronald

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