On Fri, Apr 8, 2011 at 3:37 PM, William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > In order to use Cython on OS X, one currently needs XCode. Cython is > a really core feature of Sage. > E.g., I talk about it a lot in my Sage course for undergrads [1], and > on Wednesday I had some very confused > students in class that couldn't get Cython to work on their own > computers (running OS X)... since as it turned out > they didn't have XCode installed. I wonder if the error message > when trying to use %cython mode in the notebook on OS X could be > improved... OS X comes with XCode, it's just not installed. It's just XCode 4 that costs $4.99. However, what happens if people install a binary gcc? Does Cython work at that point? Or are you just arguing that XCode is necessary because it's an easy way to a binary gcc. I understand why XCode isn't installed by default since the developer tools and documentation is several GB. Most people don't need that. I'm of the general opinion that XCode 4 being $4.99 isn't a problem. It's entirely possible that it will be included with 10.7, we just don't know. I've worked on platforms where the development tools have cost much more, but we still have XCode 3. For people who are only using the compilers, that's more than adequate since we can download the source for the updated compilers. To comment on the thread title, Apple hasn't forked gcc. They worked on developing a BSD compiler (clang) and since then, people have done work to use gcc as the front end and llvm as the back end. The Dragonegg project is the most recent work on this. Apple wanted a BSD compiler since they couldn't integrate the compiler into XCode on the level they wanted with the GCC compiler due to the GPL license. Cheers, Tim. --- Tim Lahey PhD Candidate, Systems Design Engineering University of Waterloo http://about.me/tjlahey -- Tim Lahey PhD Candidate, Systems Design Engineering University of Waterloo http://about.me/tjlahey -- To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URL: http://www.sagemath.org
