[Pythonmac-SIG] best way to install packages?

[Christopher Barker]

Ronald Oussoren wrote:
> Even more important that versioning is that eggs give you an easy way
> to uninstall software (although I'm not quite sure about scripts).

It really does look like eggs are the way of the future.

>> Bob's "official unofficial" 2.4.1 framework build for 10.3 (this will
>> run on 10.4 also)
>>
>> 2.4.1 framework build for 10.4
> 
> Don't. There should be only one binary installation of Python 2.4.x for 
> every x and than one should work on 10.3 and 10.4.

OK. However, if I understand it, if I am running 10.4, I can run a 
python and extensions that were built on and for 10.3. However, if I 
build an extension on 10.4, it may well not work on 10.3. What that 
means is that anyone building extensions on 10.4 can't contribute to the 
repository of packages for 10.3. However, you also can't run extensions 
built for a 10.3 python on a 10.4 python, which is why this is such a 
headache! For that matter, can I build extensions to a python built for 
10.3 on 10.4 at all without trickery?

I, and all my colleagues, are switching to 10.4 now (I just upgraded to 
day). I was just thinking I'd go 10.4 across the board, but now I think 
I may want to stick with a python built for 10.3, if for no other reason 
that to get wxPython working as easily as possible.

 > This makes life a lot easier for casual users.

Good point. The "standard" approach is for casual users, those doing 
things like trying to build a universal binary python can do whatever 
they want!

> I'd prefer /Library/Python/2.x/bin as the directory where scripts get 
> placed
> because that directory is easily visible in the Finder and allows you to 
> install
> software for both python2.3 and python2.4. 

So we need to tell people to add that to their PATH.

> The bin directory inside the framework is a bit to hidden for most users
> and hard to get to using the Finder.

Maybe we could put a link from /Library/Python/2.x/bin to the bin 
directory in the Framework. That way, you wouldn't need to change the 
standard script dir.

> I'll  defer to any standard once it is here :-). Feel free to write a 
> proposal about a standard, including what needs to be done to get there ;-)

OK, I'll get working on that, once I'm clear about all this 10.3 vs. 
10.4 stuff.

By the way, is there any advantage of the 10.4 build?

One other thought: having all these different pythons and what not to 
support is a pain, but really, once you have the setup.py hacked so that 
it works right, it's no big deal to build a new package. What that means 
is that the real goal is to make sure that the patches required to build 
for OS-X get applied by the package maintainers.

Then things will "just work"

-Chris



-- 
Christopher Barker, Ph.D.
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