[Pythonmac-SIG] Python 2.6/3.1 on Mac - default arch is i386?

[Sridhar Ratnakumar]

On 2010-08-16, at 6:44 AM, Kevin Walzer wrote:

> On 8/13/10 6:54 PM, Sridhar Ratnakumar wrote:
> 
>> 
>>> Of course, ActiveState and the other
>>> distributors of OS X installers could choose otherwise and, if so, patch
>>> it accordingly.
>> 
>> That's what I am currently inclined to do as we are dropping 10.4/ppc support (in favour of 10.5+/x86_64) in upcoming 2.6 releases.
> 
> I haven't followed every item of this thread, so I hope this question isn't redundant: will a forthcoming release of ActivePython 2.6 or 2.7 be built as a 32/64-bit binary for Intel

ActivePython 2.7 is already built for 32/64-bit intel[1]. Python 2.6.6 will be released today and the subsequent ActivePython 2.6 (scheduled this week) *will* be built for 32/64-bit intel.

> [...] and will it work with a 32/64-bit Intel build of ActiveTcl 8.6 beta (based on Cocoa)?

No, the thing is tkinter is tied to a specific version of tcl/tk ... as it does not use the tcl stubs mechanism,
http://bugs.python.org/issue8798
http://code.activestate.com/lists/python-list/197819/

ActivePython 2.6 and 2.7 are built for Tcl 8.5.  On Snow Leopard, it will work fine with Apple's Tcl/Tk both in i386 and x86_64 mode. On 10.5, you will need an intel build of 8.5 ... otherwise, install ActiveTcl 8.5 (i386) and run Python in 32-bit mode as "arch -i386 python" if you want to use tkinter. Note that Python 2.6 from python.org is still (and will be) an universal binary, and uses tcl 8.4.

An ideal fix to this problem, according to Hobbs, is to patch _tkinter.c to use the tcl stubs mechanism in order to support higher tcl versions during runtime (eg: 8.6).

-srid

[1] http://www.activestate.com/blog/2010/07/activepython-27-released