[Pythonmac-SIG] making a C extension compatible across OS versions?

[Bob Ippolito]

On May 27, 2005, at 4:29 AM, has wrote:

> Bob wrote:
>
>
>>> Will extensions built on 10.4 work on 10.3, or will I have to  
>>> create separate OS-specific binaries for those as well?
>>>
>>
>> Maybe, it depends.
>>
>> You really should be building packages on the least common  
>> denominator, you have to test there anyway.  It's hard to do  
>> right, Xcode is the only environment that can properly manage SDKs  
>> and such, Apple didn't really put that functionality anywhere  
>> else, and autoconf REALLY gets in the way (i.e. ./configure).
>>
>
> Not a problem for other modules where the APIs are the same over  
> multiple OSes. (I've had no problems so far using .so binaries  
> built on Jaguar under Tiger, for example.)
>
> Given that OSATerminology needs to use Tiger's weak-lined  
> OSACopyScriptingDefinition function when running under Tiger, is it  
> possible/practical to build it on Panther? It sounds like the  
> easiest thing would be to put the Tiger-only code in a separate  
> file and build that on Tiger, and build the remainder on an older  
> OS as before; then have osaterminology import or ignore the Tiger- 
> only extension at runtime as appropriate.

Yeah, the "easiest" thing is basically to do that, or to build an  
entirely separate version for users with Tiger.

-bob