pygame and python 2.5

[mensanator at aol.com]

On Feb 11, 1:35�am, Steve Holden <s... at holdenweb.com> wrote:
> mensana... at aol.com wrote:
> > On Feb 10, 4:07?pm, "Ben Sizer" <kylo... at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> On Feb 10, 6:31 am, "mensana... at aol.com" <mensana... at aol.com> wrote:
>
> >>> On Feb 9, 11:39?am, "Ben Sizer" <kylo... at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>> Hopefully in the future, some of those convoluted steps will be fixed,
> >>>> but that requires someone putting in the effort to do so. As is often
> >>>> the case with Python, and indeed many open source projects, the people
> >>>> who are knowledgeable enough to do such things usually don't need to
> >>>> do them, as their setup already works just fine.
> >>> So you're saying the knowledgeable people's attitude
> >>> is "fuck everyone else as lomg as it's not MY problem"?
> >>> And you people complain about Microsoft.
> >> Am I one of "those people"? You don't exactly make it clear.
>
> > I'm talking about the people who complain about Microsoft
> > making the VC6 compiler no longer legally available and
> > yet are so irresponsible that they use it for the latest
> > release.
>
> I think you'll find those two sets are disjoint.
>
>
>
>
>
> >> But yes, there is a lot of "well, it works for me" going around. If
> >> you do that long enough, people stop complaining, so people wrongly
> >> assume there's no longer a problem. This is partly why Python has
> >> various warts on Windows and why the standard libraries are oddly
> >> biased, why configuring Linux almost always ends up involving hand-
> >> editing a .conf file, why the leading cross-platform multimedia
> >> library SDL still doesn't do hardware graphics acceleration a decade
> >> after such hardware became mainstream, and so on.
>
> >> However, the difference between the open-source people and Microsoft
> >> is the the open-source people aren't being paid by you for the use of
> >> their product, so they're not obligated in any way to help you.
>
> > This argument has become tiresome. The Python community
> > wants Python to be a big fish in the big pond. That's why
> > they make Windows binaries available.
>
> ? I would suggest rather that "the Python community" (by which you
> apparently mean the developers) hope that the fruits of their labours
> will be used by as wide a cross-section of computer users as possible.
>
> The goals of open source projects are not those of commercial product
> developers: I and others wouldn't collectively put in thousands of
> unpaid hours a year to make a commercial product better and protect its
> intellectual property, for example.
>
> >> After all, they have already given freely and generously, and if they choose
> >> not to give more on top of that, it's really up to them.
>
> > Right. Get people to commit and then abandon them. Nice.
>
> Anyone who committed to Python did so without being battered by a
> multi-million dollar advertising campaign.

Multi-million dollar ad campaigns mean nothing to me.
I committed to Python because it's a great language.
I've dabbled in perl, Visual BASIC, UBASIC, REXX, Java,
Scheme, C and C++ but Python is the one I use.

> The Python Software
> Foundation has only recently dipped its toes in the advocacy waters,
> with results that are still under evaluation. And the use of the
> Microsoft "free" VC6 SDK was never a part of the "official" means of
> producing Python or its extensions, it was a community-developed
> solution to the lack of availability of a free VS-compatible compilation
> system for extension modules.
>
> I agree that there are frustrations involved with maintaining extension
> modules on the Windows platform without having a copy of Visual Studio
> (of the correct version) available. One of the reasons Python still uses
> an outdated version of VS is to avoid forcing people to upgrade. Any
> such decision will have fallout.

Such as anyone who tries to get in the game late.

> An update is in the works for those
> using more recent releases,

That's good news, although the responsible thing
to do was not relaease version 2.5 until such issues
are resolved.

> but that won't help users who don't have
> access to Visual Studio.

That can be solved by throwing money at the problem.
But money doesn't help when the solution is on the
far side of the moon.

>
> >> Yes, it's
> >> occasionally very frustrating to the rest of us, but that's life.
>
> > As the Kurds are well aware.
>
> I really don't think you help your argument by trying to draw parallels
> between the problems of compiler non-availability and those of a
> population subject to random genocide.

You missed the point of the analogy.

The US government suggested to the oppressed tribes
in Iraq that they should rise up and overthrow
Saddam Hussein at the end of the first Gulf War.
And what did the US government do when they rose up?
Nothing. They were left to twist in the wind.

> Try to keep things in perspective, please.

See if you can see the similarity.

I buy into Python. I spend a lot of effort
developing a math library based on GMPY to use
in my research. I discover a bug in GMPY and
actually go to a lot of effort and solve it.
But _I_ can't even use it because I've been
left to twist in the wind by the fact that
Python 2.5 for Windows was built with an
obsolete compiler that's not even available.

Luckily, unlike the Kurds, my situation had
a happy ending, someone else compiled the fixed
GMPY source and made a 2.5 Windows version
available. But can anyone say what will happen
the next time?

>
> >> The best I feel I can do is raise these things on occasion,
> >> on the off-chance that I manage to catch the attention of
> >> someone who is
> >> altruistic, knowledgeable, and who has some spare time on
> >> their hands!
>
> > Someone who, say, solved the memory leak in the GMPY
> > divm() function even though he had no way of compiling
> > the source code?
>
> > Just think of what such an altruistic, knowedgeable
> > person could do if he could use the current VC compiler
> > or some other legally available compiler.
>
> Your efforts would probably be far better spent trying to build a
> back-end for mingw or some similar system into Python's development
> system, to allow Python for Windows to be built on a regular rather than
> a one-off basis using a completely open source tool chain.

No, as I said elsewhere, I'm not a software developer,
I'm an amateur math researcher. My efforts are best spent
as an actual end user to find and report bugs that the
developers never see. Remember, a programmer, because he
wrote it, only _thinks_ he knows how the program works.
Whereas I, the user, _know_ how it works.

>
> The fact that the current maintainers of the Windows side of Python
> choose to use a commercial tool to help them isn't something I am going
> to try and second-guess. To do so would be to belittle efforts I would
> have no way of duplicating myself, and I have far too much respect for
> those efforts to do so.

And I respect those efforts too. What I don't respect
is irresponsible behaviour.

>
> There are published ways to build extension modules for Windows using
> mingw, by the way - have you tried any of them?

Yeah, and got nowhere.

> It's much harder than sniping on a newsgroup,

That figures. You try and contribute and you get
accused of being a troll.

> but you earn rather more kudos.

Guess what kudos I got for solving the GMPY divm()
problem? None. How much effort would it have been
to mention my contribution in the source code
comments (as was the case for other contributers)?
Not that I'm bitter, after all, I'm altruistic.

By the way, on the sci.math newsgroup I promote
Python every chance I get. One fellow thanked me
profusely for recommending Python & GMPY and asked
for some help with a program he was having problems
with. We worked it out fine but his problem made me
suspect there may be more bugs in GMPY. What's my
motivation for tracking them down?

>
> regards
>   Steve
> --
> Steve Holden       +44 150 684 7255  +1 800 494 3119
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