[Pythonmac-SIG] "Best" Mac Python under Leopard?

Dav Clark dav at alum.mit.edu
Sat Aug 23 18:25:21 CEST 2008


Andrew, I have

I will add that if you need pyobjc, I had weird problems with pyobjc  
1.4 on leopard and a python.org framework build.  Stuff just didn't  
work (wasn't receiving messages from an external library for hardware  
interface).  I switched to the system python w/ objc 2.0 and  
everything worked fine.  I don't know of any serious issues between  
2.5.1 and 2.5.2 that provide a compelling argument to upgrade to the  
Framework build either.

The eggs for the scipy superpack (at drop.io/superpack) install fine  
into the system python (and there is no longer, to my knowledge, a  
fortran compiler installed by the script - you should get that from  
macresearch.org).  In my experience, it was a huge hassle keeping up  
with the bleeding edge dependencies for numpy, scipy and crew using  
ports or Fink.  Installing the few libs that aren't already part of  
the OSX system was easy enough into /usr/local/lib.

I know of no other way to get bleeding edge numpy, scipy, ipython,  
etc. on OSX except to build it yourself (which is not so bad these  
days - but does require install of some random things like fortran).   
But if you can try the system python with like 15 minutes of setup,  
you may as well.  It's easy enough to switch to something else later!

I'm at the SciPy conference right now, and they are interested in  
including objc 2.0 in EPD, but it is not currently there.  I have  
added a ticket (with Dave Peterson's blessing) to the Trac to get this  
feature added.  EPD is also, however, not really that bleeding edge.

Cheers,
DC

> 2008/8/22 Chris Fonnesbeck <listservs at mac.com>:
>> Andrew Jaffe <a.h.jaffe <at> gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>>
>>> Hi All,
>>>
>>> Thanks for the advice!
>>>
>>> However, I'm pretty sure I don't need the overhead of a fink or  
>>> MacPorts
>>> install -- I've been very happy with Framwork installs so  far  
>>> (and I'm
>>> pretty sure that's necessary for PyObjC).
>>>
>> I can vouch for the new Enthought Python:
>>
>> http://www.enthought.com/products/epddownload.php
>>
>> It comes with a variety of scientific programming packages, and  
>> uses egg
>> packages, so it is very easy to maintain and update.
>>
>>
>>
>>
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