[Pythonmac-SIG] My stab at a new page

[Bob Ippolito]

On Feb 9, 2006, at 4:17 PM, Kevin Ollivier wrote:

> Hi Bob,
>
> On Feb 9, 2006, at 4:10 PM, Bob Ippolito wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
>> The issue of not being able to produce redistributable applications
>> still exists, and also backwards compatibility with previous versions
>> of Mac OS X.
>
> I haven't had time to respond to your other emails yet, but I've seen
> you mention this several times and I was wondering - why is it not
> possible to produce re-distributable applications with the system
> Python? (A thread title, etc. would be fine too if this was answered
> somewhere.)

The largest issue is that you can't legally redistribute the Python  
interpreter that ships with Mac OS X, so you can't create standalone  
applications.  Even if you could, it wouldn't have a chance of being  
backwards compatible with the way that Apple builds things.

Semi-standalone applications are fragile and only work on a  
particular minor version of OS X... for example, anything you build  
against it is only compatible with Mac OS X 10.4.  It won't be  
compatible with Mac OS X 10.3, and it won't be compatible with Mac OS  
X 10.5 or anything farther away in either direction.

Using a third party Python has a chance of being backwards compatible  
(some apps built on 10.4 work on 10.3) and it virtually guarantees  
forwards compatibility (apps I built standalone with py2app on 10.2  
still work on 10.4, even with i386 hardware).

-bob