[Pythonmac-SIG] Building a MacPython-OSX on top of Jaguar's /usr/bin/python
Jack Jansen
Jack.Jansen@oratrix.com
Fri, 22 Nov 2002 00:41:22 +0100
Folks,
I've made quite some progress on building a MacPython-OSX that sits on
top of the Apple-installed /usr/bin/python in Jaguar.
You're all kindly requested to give this a try, it will not interfere
with a framework build of Python, and it is very easy to remove. Get
the cvs version of python 2.3a0, and see Mac/OSX/README.JAGUAR for the
build instructions.
There's one serious problem that I need a workaround for, though: the
"macfs" module that shipped with Python 2.2 uses Mac pathnames in stead
of unix pathnames. This causes all sorts of problems with the IDE, and
probably with lots of other software as well.
The "glue" that ties the new stuff in the existing distribution is
currently a MacPython.pth file in /usr/lib/python2.2/Lib/site-python,
but officially this only allows appending to sys.path, not prepending,
and the latter would be needed to override macfs with a newer version.
There is a hack around this (add a line "import sys; sys.path.insert(0,
....)" to the .pth file), but I would like to hear of any other ideas
to fix this.
There is also the (probably purely theoretical) possibility that some
users of Jaguar Python depend on using colon-style pathnames for
FSSpecs, so then installing MacPython-OSX would break things for them.
An alternative is to do away with FSSpecs completely, and switch to
FSRefs everywhere, but this would require first implementing enough
support for FSRefs, and then fixing all the Python code (especially
FSSpecs pointing to non-existing files will be a problem).
I'm open to good ideas,
--
- Jack Jansen <Jack.Jansen@oratrix.com>
http://www.cwi.nl/~jack -
- If I can't dance I don't want to be part of your revolution -- Emma
Goldman -