[Pythonmac-SIG] Some questions about going to MacOS X 10.4

[Bob Ippolito]

On Aug 23, 2005, at 1:58 PM, Russell E. Owen wrote:

> I've been considering upgrading my Mac to 10.4.2. However, I notice  
> that
> there are very few python packages for 10.4 at
> <http://pythonmac.org/packages/>. I was wondering if this was  
> innocuous
> (i.e. those who build such packages just aren't at 10.4 themselves) or
> something more ominous such as a problem with building python packages
> on 10.4?

The version marker for a package is the minimum required version  
(really -- the version of Mac OS X on which it was built).  10.3  
packages work fine on 10.4, especially those for Python 2.4.

> Also, I distribute a semi-standalone python app (which includes
> everything except python itself). Right now it's compatible with  
> 10.3.x
> and 10.4.x. But if I upgrade...are users on 10.3.9 likely to be  
> able to
> use an app created under 10.4.x 9 (with the built-in python 2.3.5)? In
> case it matters, I presently create the app with bundlebuilder,  
> though I
> plan to switch to py2app someday.

Well, semi-standalone apps are basically guaranteed not to work on  
10.5, so you really should be looking to do standalone apps unless  
you want to maintain multiple versions in the future.

> As an aside, I'd love to upgrade to python 2.4.x but then to  
> distribute
> my app I'd have to figure out how to build a fully standalone app (one
> that includes python).

If you're using py2app, that happens by default when using a non- 
System interpreter.

-bob