[Pythonmac-SIG] Some thoughts on Python and OS X

[Bob Ippolito]

On Jun 14, 2004, at 3:35 AM, Markus W. Weissmann wrote:

> On Jun 14, 2004, at 07:54, Bob Ippolito wrote:
>
>>
>> On Jun 14, 2004, at 1:28 AM, Kenneth McDonald wrote:
>>
>>> One of the things that is expected is that I can download, compile,
>>> and install a more recent version of Python without problem (assuming
>>> the newer version itself doesn't have problems.) Another is that
>>> add-ons for Python which have been written to install nicely in a
>>> generic UNIX environment should continue to do so under OS X.
>>
>> It will work just fine, but it must supersede the system installation 
>> due to bugs that were in 2.3.0 that we can not fix.  Once you install 
>> your own Python, you can no longer expect to be able to compile 
>> software for the stock 2.3.0.
>>
>
> huh? I have a non-apple installation of python here on my machine, 
> though
> apple's python still works. (of course I didn't install it into 
> /usr...)

If you have another *framework* python installed in /Library or 
~/Library then your /System python will no longer be able to link 
modules correctly due to a bug in 2.3.0.

>> Any Python extensions that have been written properly already use 
>> distutils, and thus already work fine on OS X.  If anything is 
>> designed to work in a "generic UNIX environment" and does NOT work on 
>> OS X is simply not done correctly.  Things should work on Windows 
>> too, and that means using distutils.
>>
>
> thats _not_ true.
> 1. OS-X is a bit picky about compiling stuff (-> flat_namespace etc.) 
> - many SWIG generated
> wrappers fail with apple's python
> 2. On stock OS-X you are doomed if you need /dev/dsp for sound (Dan 
> Christiansen is developing
> a kext to fix this at least on OpenDarwin)

That has nothing to do with Python.

>>> I find this a particular problem when it comes to Frameworks and 
>>> Libraries.
>>> Here's a typical example of installing a couple of Python modules 
>>> recently:
>>>
>>> 1) Compile module A--works, great. Install it. Where the heck are the
>>> files? Do a search on the disk. Ah, there they are in
>>> /Library/Frameworks/Python/.../.../... and so on 
>>> .../2.3/site-packages.
>>> Create a link from a more reasonable location so they'll be on the
>>> python path.
>>
>> /Library/Python/2.3 is the more reasonable link, it already exists.
>>
>
> ever tried to install mod_python with apple's python? You'll get the 
> modules clobbered
> somewhere into /System - and it wouldn't work if you just moved them 
> to /Library/Python/2.3.

mod_python is not really a module, it's an extending+embedding of 
Python.  It sounds like it doesn't use distutils correctly.  I didn't 
think it still supported Apache 1.3.x anyway?

-bob
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