[Pythonmac-SIG] My stab at a new page

[Bob Ippolito]

On Feb 10, 2006, at 1:06 PM, Kevin Walzer wrote:

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> Christopher Barker wrote:
>> Louis Pecora wrote:
>>> This seems to be where this argument goes:  the user/newbies vs. the
>>> developers.
>>
>> I don't think so. This entire conversation is about supporting the
>> newbies. The disagreements are about how best to do that.
>>
>>>  You shouldn't be forcing everyone to adopt a python system
>>> that then suits your marketing model.
>>
>> I know why I'm pushing for the "Install the 2.4 version" approach,  
>> and
>> it's precisely to support newbies, not to fit a marketing model.
>>
>> If we make it clear that there is one "Standard" way to do python  
>> on the
>> Mac, then it's easier for everyone:
>>
>> - Newbies don't have to make a decision they don't understand the
>> implications of.
>>
>> - We don't have to field questions about more than one version.
>>
>> - When they need to add an extension package, there is only one  
>> set of
>> pre-built packages to look at.
>>
>> - Extension package builders and maintainers only need to target one
>> version, and as a result, more packages will work on the Mac. (you
>> should see what's in the matplotlib setup.py: a fragile mess  
>> inside the
>> "darwin" section, looking around for whether you're running fink, or
>> darwinports, etc. so that libs can be found. What a pain!)
>>
>> Those are some of the reasons that I think we need to establish a
>> single, standard, "Recommended by the MacPython community" version.
>
> +1 for what Chris is advocating here.
>
> A good model for this is Tk Aqua: see http:// 
> tcltkaqua.sourceforge.net.
> For the past few  years this has been the standard way to get the
> "latest and greatest" Tcl/Tk for the Mac. It's been superseded a  
> bit by
> ActiveState's distribution, but because ActiveState has licensing
> restrictions, that's not for everyone.
>
> ActivePython is also an example to consider that's a little more
> relevant. Not to recommend ActivePython itself, as its licensing is  
> more
> restrictive than the build that will result from this discussion,  
> but it
> is a self-contained, easily-installed, well-documented, and up-to-date
> bundle of Python and packages.

The licensing issues with ActivePython were clarified last year:  It  
is explicitly legal to redistribute self-contained application  
bundles (a la py2exe or py2app) built with ActiveState's  
distributions.  This gives it a leg up on Apple's distro (which has  
no such clause; components of OS X are not redistributable), and  
makes it a candidate Python distribution for almost anyone.   
Personally, I have tried it out a bit on one of my machines and found  
a couple bugs that were quickly resolved.  Nothing outstanding and  
nothing major, and the turnaround was quick.

Currently, ActivePython on Mac OS X is almost exactly the same thing  
that we're going to be shipping with the universal build of 2.4.2.   
The differences will be:

1. They aren't shipping readline, we will
2. We'll probably ship universal first
3. I don't believe they have the PATH hack in their installer
4. They ship with an ActivePython icon for pythonw, we'll stick with  
the current icon.

Currently, ActivePython's 2.4.2 distro is a pretty good solution over  
our 2.4.1 because it doesn't require the OS X 10.4 fix and it's  
Python 2.4.2 instead of 2.4.1... The other differences are negligible  
other than the fact that we ship readline and they don't.

On Win32, there is more of a reason to use ActivePython because they  
ship win32all and its IDE (which is different from IDLE).  Of course,  
that's just an install away with the python.org distro, but it's one  
less step.  This would be roughly equivalent to us shipping PyObjC  
for Mac I guess.

-bob