[Pythonmac-SIG] Why Do I Explicitly Need MacPython

Ronald Oussoren ronaldoussoren at mac.com
Wed Sep 20 22:31:21 CEST 2006


On Sep 20, 2006, at 8:25 PM, Bob Ippolito wrote:

> 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.

The MacPorts folks have over 300 ports that are python related, I  
assume they actually test their ports ;-).  As Bob noted MacPython is  
supported by the Python community, "we" also maintain the mac port,  
macports and fink just repackage that.

A major conceptual difference between MacPorts/Fink and MacPython is  
that the the first two are projects to use unix software on the mac,  
while MacPython is more focused on fitting in with the OS.

To increase the confusion: there's also an ActiveState distribution  
of Python. This is also a framework install. I have no idea why you  
would want to use this unless you need commercial support for your  
python installation.

Ronald
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