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

[Bob Ippolito]

On Dec 24, 2003, at 6:43 AM, Jack Jansen wrote:

>
> 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).

Fax cover pages probably won't get created properly if your Python 
2.3.3 can't load Apple's CoreGraphics extension (and you replace their 
Python).

-bob
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: smime.p7s
Type: application/pkcs7-signature
Size: 2357 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://mail.python.org/pipermail/pythonmac-sig/attachments/20031224/29edac9b/smime.bin