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

Bob Ippolito bob at redivi.com
Tue Dec 23 22:59:23 EST 2003


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
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