[Pythonmac-SIG] Main Python on Mac version?

[Bob Ippolito]

On Feb 11, 2005, at 3:25, Roger Binns wrote:

>> There are some bugfixes that would be nice, but it's dangerous to do  
>> that because you end up with some people that have a fast datetime  
>> module and some people with a slow datetime module, or some people 
>> with  a plistlib that works with dates, and other people without.
>
> That is why I stay "mainstream".  The problem now is that BitPim
> on Mac is using 2.3.0, yet 2.3.4 on Windows and Linux.  I presume
> the various bug fixes in 2.3.[1-5] were serious enough to warrant
> new releases, otherwise why did they bother making them.

The standard library is large, it's entirely possible that five bugfix 
releases go by and don't touch anything you use.

If you want to build with a newer version of Python, go ahead, there's 
nothing stopping you and py2app will do the right thing.  Simply invoke 
setup.py with the python you want included in the application bundle.  
The system Python is a special case in that it *refuses* to copy it 
into the bundle for various reasons.

>> If you want an application that is 10.2 compatible,
>
> The way I deal with OS version compatibility is to just build on 
> whatever the version is.  I never try and build on a newer version
> and hope it will work on older versions.  That mythical virtualisation
> software would be very handy for this.
>
>> There's a good chance system-python-dependent applications built on 
>> 10.3 will  work on 10.4, but there's probably not a good chance that 
>> such  applications will work on later versions of Mac OS X (if, for 
>> example,  Python 2.4 becomes the default and 2.3 goes away).
>
> And that is how we end up building for different MacOS versions.
>
> When we switch to Python 2.4, it will be required for all supported
> operating systems and their versions.  Presumably we'll still be
> supporting 10.3 then so I'll have to figure out how to deal with
> that.

But my point was that you only need to build on the lowest common 
denominator and it will work everywhere else.

-bob