int multiplication overflow and the future of python

[Tim Peters]

[posted & mailed]

[Ram Bhamidipaty]
> On red hat 7.0 with python 1.6 I am running into overflow problems.
>
> From looking at the bug database at sourceforge I can see
> that other people have run into this, and it looks like
> there is a fix....but I have not been able to find it. Is there
> a patch that I should apply to upgrade my 1.6 source to the
> latest version?

It's not a Python problem so there's not a Python patch.  See "LONG_BIT
Error" at

http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/moinmoin/FrequentlyAskedQuestions

for a workaround.  I have heard (but don't know for a fact) that Red Hat is
shipping their own critical patches to 7.0 that fix this problem (among
others -- they shipped a development snapshot of gcc with 7.0, which they
should not have done).

> This leads to a larger question: Which version is being maintained?
> Is active developement taking place for both 1.6 and 2.0?

No, just for 2.0.

> I've been using 1.6 because the features in 2.0 seem like they
> involve bigger changes to the code base and I thought I should
> wait until the initial bugs are worked out.

Well, that's ironic:  the bugs in new 1.6 features were worked out in 2.0
<wink>.