[Pythonmac-SIG] Need to hand-compile expat on OS X? (Fwd: [XML-SIG] Strange install issue)

[Dinu Gherman]

Jack Jansen:

> This is fixed in 2.3a0: Python now simply includes the relevant
> parts of expat.

But when? If it's still a configure/compile-time option when
building Python itself, it's hard to ship an expat executable
or its source without writing a long install readme and not
scare people of from compiling the Python interpreter. This
is, of course, true only for "typical" Mac users who probably
never run a compiler.

If it was a wrapper module in the standard library or one I
could put in site-packages, great, but I think this is not
the case.

It's kind of sad that OS X comes with some batteries excluded,
like GNU readline and expat... not to mention a sane version-
ing mechanism, which apparently is not really the case for
Apple's Installer.app. I know of fink, but this is probably
not for the "innocent masses"...

So this is the only "solution" I see then, building my own
fat Python distribution in this .pkg format with all extra
batteries included, if I don't want people to compile stuff.
Opinions?

Dinu

PS: Sorry, Jack if you receive this twice! It should have
     been sent to the list in the first place...