On Apr 29, 2005, at 9:03 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
On Apr 29, 2005, at 4:58, Bob Ippolito wrote:
So stop providing libraries for 2.3, eliminate the confusion, and have them install that one extra package.
That's what I would do if I were reasonably sure that everyone else did the same.
Which makes me wondering: who is distributing Mac Python packages at all at the moment? There's the PackageManager archive, yours, and Fink, but is there anything else? Fink is separate anyway (they have their own Python), and PackageManager seems to be on its way to the museum.
So if your archive is the only one that matters anyway, then we (the participants of this SIG) could start a massive packaging campaign to make it the "industry standard".
I would say that the PackageManager archive doesn't really matter. There's not much in there, and from what I've seen it's caused more headaches than it has cured. Also, nearly everything there should also be in pythonmac packages.
There's MacEnthon, which matters, and is currently only supporting Panther's 2.3.0. That may or may not change depending on what's best for Enthought and their customers/community. The majority of the work that went into MacEnthon was well underway before 2.4.1 was available, so it's understandable that they used Python 2.3 at the time.
Well if it were my decision I'd say that people should stop caring about 2.3, because 2.4 is better in every way (except "they don't already have it") and more
Personally, I agree, but then I know how important the "they already have it" (plus "it's the official Apple version") argument is for many others. Since I publish packages for the benefit of others, I do listen to them.
Well, traditionally, the "official Apple version" hasn't been so great. In Mac OS X 10.2 it was a disaster. Mac OS X 10.3 it was ok, but had some problems. Apple did get everything right in Tiger's build of Python, as far as I can tell, however, that only *really* matters if you're targeting Mac OS X 10.4 (no more no less) and Python 2.3. I would have to imagine that anything you build that depends on Apple's Python 2.3 will no longer function in Mac OS X 10.5 (because it will hopefully include Python 2.5). However, I can nearly guarantee it WILL work if you stick to a third party Python build (unless Apple screws something up badly).
I would recommend use of Apple's Python under the following circumstances:
- Writing plugins for otherwise non-Python applications. There can only be one Python interpreter per-process, and it makes sense to use the one that's there. This is a trade-off between cooperation of plugins and plugin authors, and compatibility with future versions of Mac OS X. Alternatively, on a per-application basis, it might make sense to have a "meta-plugin" that includes a Python 2.4 interpreter plus some useful libraries (PyObjC, etc.) that other python-based plugins could depend on.
- wxPython 2.5.3 or TclTkAqua applications where using the stock libraries and saving 20MB or so (uncompressed) is worth the trade-off of targeting Tiger specifically (knowing that Panther and 10.5 will be incompatible). Or otherwise if saving the 1-2MB of interpreter overhead is worth the risk, though I'd hope that not to be the case.
- Anything that otherwise targets Tiger specifically where using Python 2.4 features isn't important.
-bob
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