[Pythonmac-SIG] (no subject)

[Chris Barker]

Ronald Oussoren wrote:
> The same is true for something like DYLD_FRAMEWORK_PATH. This might  
> also be
> useful for testing but can cause serious problems when you always set  
> it

Sure, but no one would mess with DYLD_FRAMEWORK_PATH in nearly so casual 
a way as people mess with PYTHONPATH.

I think the root of the problem here is that in common usage, Python is 
not considered a core system component. Everyone who uses it tends to 
behave as though their application is the only one using python on the 
system. It is not treated as a core system component, like the linker, 
for instance. This is the case both with folks that put together the os 
(RedHat, Apple, IBM), who use it and have not taken into consideration 
that other applications might well want to use different versions, etc, 
and with application builders, that do things like mess with PYTHONPATH 
for their own application.

I'd like to see Python accepted as a core system component, but this 
would require more discipline by everyone, as well as a few things we 
don't have like a standard way to do version management, of both python 
and python packages. Until then, we're probably better of thinking of 
python like a statically linked library: each instance should have 
nothing to do with any other instance, which is why I recommend the 
Py2App default to ignoring PYTHONPATH.

-Chris




-- 
Christopher Barker, Ph.D.
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