[Pythonmac-SIG] a beginner's list

[Bob Ippolito]

On Feb 8, 2006, at 5:37 PM, Bill Janssen wrote:

> Christopher Barker writes:
>> When (If) he upgrades OS-X,
>> that app will break. Almost every other app he has installed on his
>> system will continue to work, but the python based one will not. This
>> would apply to any app using the built in python and any extensions:
>> simple scripts, py2app bundles, etc.
>
> Hmmm.  I upgrade a lot, even move from Solaris to Mac OS X, and most
> (all?) of my Python programs continue to work against /usr/bin/python.
> If apps don't, that seems to me to be a problem with the current state
> of Python apps, not with Python.  File a bug report with whoever
> supports building apps with Python (Apple doesn't seem to be the
> place).  I can see that this would be a major concern for developers
> targetting the Mac platform.  But confusing the user by making them
> install a second Python wouldn't seem to be the right answer to this
> problem (to me, at least).  In fact, it seems (to me) a really
> user-hostile approach, and a good reason to look for a different app.

You're a UNIX user, you already know what you are doing, you don't  
count.

Wrong.  Extensions are extensions and they target a specific version  
of Python.  There's nothing that can be done about that; the ABI  
changes.  I'd have to guess that at least 95% of user-facing Python- 
based applications on Mac OS X are going to need at least one  
extension that doesn't ship with OS X.

There are some exceptions to this, such as Tomato Torrent which has  
an Objective-C/Cocoa GUI and communicates via pipes with the pure- 
Python BitTorrent application launched using /usr/bin/python.  I'm  
not entirely sure I'd consider that a Python application, though.

The 95% may shrink now that wxPython and tkinter are shipped with Mac  
OS X.  It may shrink even further when/if ctypes becomes part of  
Python 2.5 (if that happens), and further still if PyObjC ends up  
shipping with some version of OS X.  However, for all practical  
purposes, your argument doesn't apply to the current or immediate  
future of Python on any platform that doesn't do package management  
for you.

> If I was building an app that was written in Python, given the current
> state of MacPython and what I've read on this list over the years, I'd
> try to include the whole Python VM in that app bundle.

It's good to see that someone has been paying attention :)

-bob