On out-of-date Python Applications

[John Machin]

On Jul 19, 6:04 pm, Virgil Stokes <v... at it.uu.se> wrote:
> I am not a heavy user of Python; but, I do work with it and some of its
> application packages (e.g. PyODE), in an academic setting.
> Many of these applications packages have a Windows installer which
> usually works fine. However, I also try to keep up with the latest
> release of Python, and this is where I often have problems. That is, the
> latest Windows installer provided for some of these applications will
> not install on the latest version of Python.

If the package was written for 2.x and "the latest version of Python"
means 3.X, this is not surprising; your options are (1) wait until the
package maintainer releases a 3.x-compatible version (2) port it to
3.x yourself (3) use 2.6

Otherwise: What does "will not install" mean? Are these pure Python
packages or do they include C extensions (binary (pyd) or source?)? At
what stage of the installation does the installation fail? With what
error message(s)? With what versions of Python?



>
> I do understand that there can be a time lag between the release of
> Python applications and the latest Python. I also appreciate the work of
> the people that are responsible for these applications.
>
> My question is --- Is there anything I, as a user of an application
> package that is out-of-date with respect to the latest Python, can do to
> help in this process of bringing an application  up-to-date?
>
> --V. Stokes