[Pythonmac-SIG] My stab at a new page

[Bob Ippolito]

On Feb 9, 2006, at 12:20 PM, I. Vinogradov wrote:

> On Wed, 8 Feb 2006 20:29:34 PST
>  Bill Janssen <janssen at parc.com> wrote:
>> I've made up a sample page, at
>> http://bill.janssen.org/new-macpython-page.html.
>
> What about other sources for python2.4 such as fink and darwinports?
> Will they be frown upon or required to comply with framework
> installation?

It's the job of Fink or DarwinPorts to sustain their Python  
communities.  There are already too many choices, I'd really like to  
avoid even more confusion.  Also, the topic of Fink and DarwinPorts  
rarely ever comes up on this list, so there isn't much reason for us  
to bother.

The way that Python is used in such an environment is closer to how  
it is used on a Linux or BSD distribution, given that it has managed  
packages and is only usable from a shell.  They are also like a  
separate operating system, typically the only library they use from  
Mac OS X is libSystem -- they duplicate almost everything else.

I don't know if anything has changed in the past two years, but  
neither offered a framework build last I checked -- which means that  
neither are capable of running GUI applications from the shell  
(unless X11 counts).  You can still technically use them to build GUI  
apps via py2app, but I certainly wouldn't recommend either of those  
platforms for that purpose.  If you do happen to build a  
redistributable app with DarwinPorts or Fink, you'll essentially be  
redistributing an OS and a Python interpreter because those systems  
have their own versions of almost everything.

-bob