[Pythonmac-SIG] Bundlebuilder--why remove it?

[Christopher Barker]

Charles Hartman wrote:
> I may be wrong, 
> but I think there are a whole lot of people like me, and in some sense 
> we're an important part of the Python and Mac user base.

Maybe. I've been watching the community for a long time now, and I've 
observed two things:

1) there are a LOT more people running Python on the Mac than there were 
a few years ago.

2) There is less interest/involvement with mac-specific issues.

This is a bit of a paradox, but I think these explain it:

a) With OS-X, the Mac is far more like a *nix box for development 
purposes -- there just isn't as much need for mac-specific stuff. Even 
more so with macports and fink.

b) With the greater use comes greater support -- more packages are being 
pre-built for the mac by their maintainers, rather than by the 
python-mac community (unfortunately, not always is a robust way!)

c) People are doing more and more web development -- and in that case, 
the Mac really is just like any other unix box.

All these lead to less involvement in things like Py2app, and bdist_mpkg.

It's open-source, it's only going to get done if someone that needs it 
rolls up his/her sleeves and does it -- which may mean learning more 
about the nitty gritty details of OS-X.

My suggestion to Charles, and Kevin, (and me!) is to try to find some 
time to dig into py2app -- I think once you grok the code structure, you 
can probably find the source of the errors, and then, if you can't 
figure out a solution, Ronald or Ned (or??) might be able to help out, 
without them having to do all the work -- i.e. use the experts only for 
the part where their expertise is critical.

Oh, and writing some tests may be a good start!

-Chris




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