On Feb 10, 2005, at 11:51 PM, Roger Binns wrote:
The standard Python on Mac appears to be the original 2.3.0 release.
The system one that shipped with Mac OS X 10.2 (2.2.0) is pretty much unusable, 10.3 does have the original 2.3.0 release.
Is there any reason this never gets updated by Apple?
Apple's upgrade policy seems to be one of urgency rather than convenience. If there were gnarly security issues in Python, I'm sure we'd have seen an upgrade. There's an upgrade around the corner called Tiger (10.4), which will ship with a more recent version of Python. Which version this is, I can't say, but the public WWDC 2004 sources had 2.3.3 if I'm not mistaken.
There appear to be several other packages out there that are more recent, but it is never clear what they do. Are they replacements for the Apple python? Do they install alongside it so you have two versions? Why is there nothing on python.org about what should or should not be installed and updated?
Only Apple should ever fix Apple's software (`PantherPythonFix`_ being the only exception I'd recommend). Therefore, anything else goes somewhere else. Jack's `MacPython 2.3.5`_ build goes into /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework, puts some applications in /Applications/MacPython-2.3 and some symlinks in /usr/local/bin. If you want to "replace" the Apple python, then you simply need to change your PATH.
As far as documentation goes, we could sure use some. However, for 10.3 users, 2.3.0 is usually more than adequate. The only time I've ever needed something newer is for Zope.
The only Python I care about is the main system one, and would prefer it to contain bug fixes.
Well I have slopped together the `Python23Compat`_ package that brings in some of the new stuff from Python 2.4, and Jack has a package `PantherPythonFix`_ that fixes some distutils nits.
There are some bugfixes that would be nice, but it's dangerous to do that because you end up with some people that have a fast datetime module and some people with a slow datetime module, or some people with a plistlib that works with dates, and other people without.
If you want an application that is 10.2 compatible, then you need to build it with a non-system Python (where it, and all of the extensions used, were also built on 10.2)
If you want an application that will work, unchanged, far into the future, then you should build it with a non-system Python. There's a good chance system-python-dependent applications built on 10.3 will work on 10.4, but there's probably not a good chance that such applications will work on later versions of Mac OS X (if, for example, Python 2.4 becomes the default and 2.3 goes away).
.. _`MacPython 2.3.5`: http://homepages.cwi.nl/~jack/macpython/beta.html
.. _`Python23Compat`: http://bob.pythonmac.org/archives/2005/02/02/python23compat/
.. _`PantherPythonFix`: http://bob.pythonmac.org/archives/2005/02/04/fix-mac-os-x-103s-python -230/
-bob
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