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

Russell E Owen owen at astro.washington.edu
Tue Dec 23 20:04:10 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).
>
>Thank you. I am afraid I am still a bit confused, however.
...

I think I get it now. When you say "replace" you mean it literally. 
Discard /System/Library/Frameworks/Python and put a new one in its 
place. I should have realized that the first time. Sorry for being so 
dense.

That sounds scary (especially getting the file ownership and 
permissions right). Fortunately the tk dialog problem seems to have 
gone away (perhaps it's a bug in the Jaguar 2.3 that has been fixed 
in the Panther 2.3), so 2.3 is now fine. A huge relief!!!

Thank you and Bob both for your help!

-- Russell



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