[Pythonmac-SIG] Why Do I Explicitly Need MacPython

[Bob Ippolito]

On 9/20/06, Blake Winton <bwinton at latte.ca> wrote:
> Bob Ippolito wrote:
> > On 9/19/06, Robert Love <rblove at airmail.net> wrote:
> >> I'd like a simple explanation of what MacPython does for me and my
> >> existing installation.  I did check the FAQ but didn't see any thing
> >> like this.
> > MacPython is newer and community supported. It can be used to build
> > universal redistributable applications. Universal MacPython 2.4.3 is
> > the safest bet right now, 2.5 just came out (today!) and there are
> > known incompatibilities with several popular applications. There also
> > many pre-built easy to install libraries available for 2.4:
> > http://pythonmac.org/packages/py24-fat/
>
> As a side question, why go with MacPython instead of MacPorts' version
> of Python?  (I've gone with MacPython, personally, but I'm not really
> clear what the reasons were, other than it seems to work okay this way.)
>

MacPorts is supported by the MacPorts community, and MacPython is
supported by the Python community. More packages are used and tested
with MacPython than with MacPorts or Fink.

Additionally, MacPython is built universally, builds universal
extensions by default, and can be used to create redistributable
universal applications. MacPorts and Fink are entirely architecture
specific and the plumbing to build applications (py2app) isn't
supported on anything but MacPython (but patches are accepted).

-bob