[Pythonmac-SIG] Pythonmac-SIG Digest, Vol 35, Issue 51

[Bob Ippolito]

On Mar 27, 2006, at 5:10 PM, daniel at brightfire.com wrote:

>> From: Christopher Barker <Chris.Barker at noaa.gov>
>> To: pythonmac-sig at python.org
>> Subject: Re: [Pythonmac-SIG] Installing numpy 0.9.6 problems
>> Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2006 09:50:33 -0800
>
>> Ronald Oussoren wrote:
>
>>> I'd prefer to have 1 installer for python on OSX, that makes
>>> support  a lot easier.
>
>> And we would like to by able to use Py2App to build apps that will
>> run under both 10.3.9 and 10.4.*

That will work as long as the apps don't include anything that  
strongly links to 10.4 specific features (e.g. xattr).  We've taken  
steps to make sure that the right thing happens with Python itself,  
but the onus is on third party extensions to also do the right thing  
when relevant.  For most libraries, there shouldn't be an issue.

> But shouldn't we be able to build -ppc, -i386, and even -ppc64 with  
> gcc 4.0 and then use 'lipo' to paste them to together and let the  
> loader sort them out at run-time? Does the loader on 10.3 know  
> enough to pick '-arch ppc' even with other in there or am I  
> assuming too much? I'd test it myself, but my G5 1.8 Dual has died  
> and my Quad hasn't arrived yet since I am out of town for the  
> week ;-(.

ppc64 is definitely not going to work.  You'd need a vanilla unix  
build with no Mac specific stuff to do ppc64, because it only really  
can talk to libSystem.

I don't know what you're talking about with regard to "loader".  If  
you're asking whether 10.3 can run universal binaries, then sure --  
Mac OS X has always had support for fat mach-o files, it's just the  
toolchain that's changed such that you can reasonably make them now.

-bob