[Pythonmac-SIG] Changing things in /System (was: Tkinter on Panther?)

Jack Jansen Jack.Jansen at cwi.nl
Tue Dec 23 16:43:50 EST 2003


On Dec 23, 2003, at 19:58, Russell E. Owen wrote:
> Jack said something similar when I asked about updating Python on
> Panther. But...why? I would expect the OS to see the new version in
> /Library/Frameworks and life to be good. Apparently my expectation is
> false.

The party line is "you shall not change anything in /System because 
Apple
controls it". In actual fact that chance of adverse consequences aren't 
all
that big if you are careful. If you replace Python 2.3 by Python 2.3.3 
using
the exact same build procedure Apple used (get it from the darwin CVS
repository) the chance of you breaking anything for Apple is as good as 
zero.
Apple could still break things for you, though, if they installed stuff 
over yours.
If you replace Python 2.3 with Python 2.3.3 using the normal (python 
source
distribution) build procedure the chances of breaking anything are 
still slim.
The chance of breaking things gets quite a bit bigger if you remove 
Apple-installed
Python, though. For one thing, Apple could decide to use python in a 
future
installer (they did this with Perl for a quicktime installer, and 
people who had "upgraded" their perl in-place were seriously bitten).




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