[Pythonmac-SIG] Upgrading /usr/bin/python to 2.3.1?

[Bob Ippolito]

On Feb 10, 2004, at 2:51 PM, Chris Barker wrote:

> Bob Ippolito wrote:
>> Mac OS X is not UNIX!
>
> yes, it is. It's not Linux, or FreeBSD, or Solarus, etc, but it is 
> certainly a *nix.

The linker is nothing like any other *nix linker (unless you're talking 
about NeXT), and that's what we're talking about.

>> Anyway, my proposal is more like UNIX.
>> To be REALLY like unix, you would use a flat namespace and undefined 
>> suppress, but I'm very much against that.
>
> Apple does seem to have made some real improvments with name spaces, 
> bundles, etc. and I'm all for using them. I think were problems arise 
> most is with apps ported from other Unixes--the two approaches don't 
> seem to mix well. And Apple doing a half-assed job of providing Python 
> doesn't help. Why in world is no one from Apple taking part in this 
> discussion? Someone who really knows the system might have a better 
> idea than any of us the best way to do it.

You can't really blame Apple for not donating developer resources to a 
programming language that they didn't even use (anywhere in the OS, at 
least) until OS X 10.3.  It's really our fault that Python isn't 
perfect on OS X.  It is somewhat Apple's fault that they don't do minor 
version updates of Python, but I don't really blame them for that 
either (for the same reasons).

If we fix Python, and get more users, Apple will have a good reason to 
help us.  Right now, they don't.

>>   Besides, you need to worry about those errors on other platforms 
>> anyhow.
>
> That was my point... Like it or not, there are a LOT of python 
> extensions that were made to work on other Unixes...it would be great 
> if they worked on OS-X without the user having to do anything.

The user doesn't do anything, it's the extension developer who ensures 
that they are using distutils properly such that it will deploy to any 
OS.  If a standardish extension doesn't build on OS X, then it's 
probably the developer's fault for not using distutils properly.

> I can't add much to this discusion, because I havn't built anything 
> complicated on ANY platform without someone else's Makefile or build 
> system. That's why I like distutils so much...I dont need to know 
> anything about all this...it just works (at least on Linux).

Distutils does pretty much just work on OS X.. however, it's not 
entirely OS X-ified because nobody wants to write and maintain a big 
distutils patch for OS X.

-bob
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