[Pythonmac-SIG] carbon compliance of python 1.5.2

Jeffrey P Shell jeffrey@Digicool.com
Wed, 09 Feb 2000 13:06:37 -0500


on 2/9/2000 5:35 AM, Jack Jansen at jack@oratrix.nl wrote::

>> I was wondering if python 152 is carbon compliant, and if not, what are the
>> main reasons.
>> 
> If I remember correctly the main carbon non-compliancies are StandardFile use
> for dialogs and a little bit of code in the interpreter inner loop that looks
> for command-period. But it's been a while since I ran the carbon tester, so I
> may have forgotten things.
> 
>> And how does it run on Mac X?

[nit]::MacX is an X windows server.  Python runs great over that :).

> I never tried it. I would be very interested in any reports on this, if
> someone has done so.

There is both great potential and danger with Python for MacOS X --
MacPython has a lot of its effort put to Python(ic) modules for the Mac
toolbox.

Since MacOS X is based on Darwin which is largely based on FreeBSD 3.2, a
Unix Python compiles fairly easily.  (Since I can't get MacOS X Server and
MacOS X DP2 to live together, I haven't tried building a Zope-ready Python
on MacOS X yet.  There were some issues the first time I tried compiling
Python1.5.2 on MacOS X DP 1, largely the fact that MacOS X no longer reports
itself as rhapsody but as 'MacOS 10.0' when you run the unix 'uname'
command.:)  This was before I knew of the configure option to set the host
to Apples BSD on PowerPC.

It looks like Apple will finally be detailing their development tools
strategy at WWDC 2000.  I *doubt* that MacOS X will ship with even 'cc'
stock.  (I think even in MacOS X Server, you have to install the development
tools from the WebObjects CD to get even the unix command line compiler
tools).

I have the feeling that MacPython would get a very low scoring on the Carbon
Dater application due to the number of cross-platform libraries (when Carbon
Dater was first released, Netscape Communicator scored very low on Carbon
Compliance due to its number of cross-platform libraries), so using a tool
like that to spot Carbon porting issues might not work for us.

I'm very interesting in seeing MacPython work on MacOS X, but my general
feeling at this point is that there will be at least two Pythons available.
Scott Anguish from Stepwise has been welcomed into the core Darwin
community, and he's the one who made a Python package for MacOS X Server (in
his note about Apple bringing him into the core Darwin community he
mentioned Python).  So there's a possibility that MacOS X will ship with a
unix Python stock.  There's also Python 1.4 heavily linked to Cocoa in
Objective Everything (www.tiptop.com), which hasn't seen much development
lately.  TipTop claims that ObjectiveEverything will work with Carbon so
that you can use Python, Perl, or TCL with Carbon applications.  But again
-- it's an old Python.


mmm, big message of disjointed information.  :)
---
Jeffrey P Shell, jeffrey@Digicool.com
http://www.zope.org/