[Pythonmac-SIG] Building 2.4

[Ronald Oussoren]

On 3-dec-04, at 15:23, Jack Jansen wrote:

>
> On 3 Dec 2004, at 10:56, Ronald Oussoren wrote:
>> It would also be possible to monkey-patch the 2.3 install. IIRC I've 
>> posted one way to do a long time ago. That message should be in the 
>> archives.
>>
>> The advantage would be that you do not have to patch files in 
>> /System, we could even use this to install include files outside of 
>> /System while keeping them functional. The disadvantage is that my 
>> approach seems to induce vomitting in some people ;-)
>
> I assume that was me:-)

Me too :-)

>
> But I can't for the life of me remember how you did it. Do you have a 
> reference?

I don't have a reference, but I do remember what I did:

1) Create a .pth file containing::

      import sys; sys.path.insert(0, '/Library/Python/2.3/python-fixes')

2) In /Library/Python/2.3 create a distutils package with only a 
__init__.py.

    That __init__.py should extend/set the __path__, to make sure we can 
import the
    rest of distutils. It should then 'execfile' the real 
distutils.__init__ and finally
    patch up distutils.

This is a gross hack, but is a relatively clean way to perform 
non-invasive surgery on an existing python installation. At least it 
doesn't requiry people to use the shell and sudo (both of which are 
scary for lots of peoply).

I'll see if I can build a working example for this tomorrow.

Ronald