[Pythonmac-SIG] Re: Building 2.4

[Russell E. Owen]

In article <97DCFDFA-448A-11D9-A8F9-000D932F4414 at columbus.rr.com>,
 David Reed <dreedmac at columbus.rr.com> wrote:

> Can anyone explain or point me to something to read about the 
> benefits/trade-offs of using the framework version (I'm a long time 
> Linux/Solaris user, but new to OS X) vs. just a regular compilation?

Framework python is already installed (good if you are OK with 2.3). 
that saves trouble, plus Mac binaries that use or extend Python will 
expect to find that. Also, it is easy to run with native windowing GUI 
toolkits (Tk, wxPython and PyQt all have aqua versions, I believe).

Unix installs are very easy to get working with X11. I don't know if 
they can be made to work with aqua GUI toolkits -- I've never tried.

On my own MacOS X box I have the standard framework Python 2.3 that came 
pre-installed, plus a unix/x11 python 2.4. I write a cross-platform 
TKinter app and it's nice to be able to see it from both a Mac 
perspective and a unix user's perspective on one computer.

Of course for any extra python packages I use I have to install them 
twice, but it's easy enough to do that. Other than that, it seems to 
"just work" (though when building x11 stuff that uses tcl/tk I move my 
/Library Tcl and Tk frameworks first, so they aren't seen; there is 
probably a smarter way to handle this, but it does the job.)

I have found that some packages are easier to install with one python or 
the other. Also, the Framework python has a lot of prebuilt binaries 
(though a lot of those are very out of date).

Just my two bits.

-- Russell