[Pythonmac-SIG] 64-bit Python?

[Nicholas Riley]

On Wed, Jun 04, 2008 at 11:02:46AM -0500, Chris Kees wrote:
> I'm wondering how to coordinate having python executables in 32 and 64  
> bit mode on the same machine. Will the patched python 2.6 build a  
> python and a python64?

There's no need for two separate executables; Mach-O files can contain
1-4 architectures (or more, potentially for CPU specific variants).

You can use the 'arch' command in Leopard to choose whether you want
to execute the 64-bit or 32-bit version of an executable (a bit like
isaexec on Solaris).


> When I build extension models do I then need to build/install each
> module twice e.g. 'python setup.py install' and 'python64 setup.py
> install'? Could I help this effort out by starting to work with your
> branch of python 2.6? I've been building a non- framework,
> non-universal build of python to work in 64 bit but it would be nice
> to take advantage of the universal build stuff as well as use some
> gui tools in 64 bit.

That's up to how Ronald modifies distutils I guess.  Unfortunately
there are lots of places where code makes assumptions that it's
building for a single architecture, so short of for example running
the setup script once for each architecture and merging the build
products it would be difficult to find a fully general solution.

-- 
Nicholas Riley <njriley at uiuc.edu> | <http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/njriley>