[Pythonmac-SIG] Installing wxPython with ActivePython and OSX

[Kevin Ollivier]

Hi Trent, Bob, etc.

Sorry for the late reply. It's been a busy week. I've altered  
wxPython's downloads page to hopefully be clearer and more up-to- 
date. As for the ANSI/Unicode issue, I made Unicode a little more  
prominent but ANSI still gets quite a lot of downloads, so I'm  
hesitant to make it hard to get to. But I've made the Unicode builds  
the first ones so as to encourage those who don't know/care to just  
click on Unicode, so if that does make a big difference in the number  
of people who download ANSI, we can re-evaluate moving it later. (I  
simply don't know how many people actually need the ANSI build for  
their app to work...) I also added the Universal binaries pre-release  
build, along with a note explaining the Tiger-only issue and giving a  
blueprint for lipo'ing the PPC and Universal builds if anyone wants  
to try that to see if it works on Panther. ;-) (I don't have time to  
attempt it right now.) URL is here:

http://wxpython.org/downloads.php

Thanks,

Kevin

On Apr 17, 2006, at 1:26 PM, Trent Mick wrote:

> [Trent]
>>> wxPython on the Mac seems to be painful right now.
>
> [Kevin Ollivier wrote]
>> Suggestions and contributions welcome! :-)
>
> My apologies, I was being unfairly brief.
> Some suggestions:
>
> - A review of the Mac OS X-related text on
>       http://www.wxpython.org/download.php
>   Some of that info is misleading:
>
>   '''wxPythonOSX needs a "Framework" build of Python 2.3, also  
> known as
>   MacPython-OSX.'''
>
>   To be fair explaining the myriad Python's out there for Mac OS X is
>   hard. This sentence though connotes the wrong thing: that  
> wxPython is
>   only available for Python 2.3.
>
>   '''If you would like to try Python 2.4.x on Panther or Tiger then  
> you
>   can get an installer here'''
>
>   Again, to be fair, giving a download link for the current Python for
>   Mac OS X (whatever that really means) is a moving target. There  
> *is* a
>   Python installer at that link, but it is no longer a recommended  
> one.
>
>   As well, some mention of the x86 arch issues would be helpful for
>   users.
>
> Okay, *one* suggestion. :) I don't currently use wxPython at all.
>
>
>>> 1. You need to get the correct build for your version of Python. For
>>>   ActivePython 2.4.x or MacPython 2.4.x that means getting one of  
>>> the
>>>   builds with "-py24" in the package name.
>>
>> Of course, this is pretty much the same as with every other (binary)
>> Python extension, isn't it?
>
> Yes, I didn't mean to imply that wxPython is special here.
>
>
>>> 2. They have "ansi" and "unicode" builds. From what I can tell the
>>>   "ansi" builds are probably only useful for Mac OS X 10.2.x
>>>   compatibility. If you are using Mac OS X 10.3 (Jaguar) or greater
>>>   then I'd stick with the "unicode" builds.
>>
>> The ansi builds are for people who haven't considered Unicode support
>> when building their wxPython apps, and thus might have issues when
>> their data is automatically converted to and from Unicode. In ansi
>> mode, it just passes the actual 'bytes' around, so the user is in
>> total control over how the data is encoded. It took me a couple days
>> of auditing my codebase before I got everything working with Unicode,
>> and while I'm glad I did, up until that point I (and users of my app)
>> were doing just fine with ANSI builds.
>>
>> But yes, in general, Unicode is the recommended build on OS X, or any
>> modern platform for that matter.
>
> If that is the case then I'd suggest having the link to the unicode
> build the only obvious one. Those requiring ANSI builds can be pointed
> to the SF.net "Files" page and/or a Unicode vs. ANSI wiki page.
>
> The current http://wiki.wxpython.org/index.cgi/UnicodeBuild, which  
> *is*
> linked to there, probably already does a good job here.
>
>
>> There aren't any Intel-only binaries, but packages containing
>> Universal binaries (built using the Universal MacPython Framework)
>> was finished up late last week and are just awaiting being uploaded
>> to the wxPython SF site. So it should be pretty soon.
>
> That's good news.
>
>
>>>   Unfortunately I was also able to *install* it on Mac OS X 10.4/
>>>   Intel but it doesn't work (importing "wx" fails) because the
>>>   binary modules in wx are for ppc while the running Python is x86.
>>
>> Right. About the only thing we could do at this point is to add a
>> command-line check on the architecture of the Python binary and bomb
>> out if it's incorrect. I could go ahead and add such a test, although
>> I think the OS X Installer will just give a generic "you are not
>> allowed to install this package" message, which is arguably just as
>> confusing to the user.... We could also add ppc to the filename,
>> though I think it will easily be missed.
>
> Yah, Apple's packaging tools are a pain. Great for braindead simple
> stuff, but quite limiting for anything custom.
>
>
> Trent
>
> -- 
> Trent Mick
> TrentM at ActiveState.com