[Pythonmac-SIG] Future 64-bit installers

[Russell E. Owen]

In article <44F47665-6748-41BF-A4E3-64AE5D88DA39 at mac.com>,
 Ronald Oussoren <ronaldoussoren at mac.com> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> We had a short discussion on the 2.7-macosx10.5 installer for python 2.7 at 
> the europython language summit due to the unfortunate problems with IDLE and 
> Tkinter in that installer: tkinter doesn't work in 64-bit due to being linked 
> with Tk 8.4 and for some reason IDLE.app doesn't work either (even though 
> that worked earlier in the develpment process).
> 
> The consensus at the summit was to replace the macosx10.5 installer (ppc, 
> x86, x86_64) by a macosx10.6 (x86, x86_64) installer for future releases. 
> That enables linking with Tk 8.5 and that would solve a number of issues 
> other than being available in 64-bit code.
> 
> Users of OSX 10.5 (or earlier) can still use the macosx10.3 installer, that 
> would stay the same. The only difference for OSX 10.5 users is that they 
> cannot use 64-bit code without building their own binaries.
> 
> The alternative to raising the OSX requirement is to ship Tk 8.5 in the 
> installer and that would grow the installer, and would increase my load.
> 
> Ronald
> 
> P.S. It should be possible to use the future macosx10.6 installer to install 
> on 10.5 as well if you install Tk 8.5 yourself, but this won't be prominently 
> advertised.-------------------------------------------------------------------
> --

I assume users of 106 can also use the 10.3.9 version if they wish -- 
e.g. for people building applications that need to run on a wide range 
of Macs.

If so, this sounds fine to me. Users who need maximum compatibility can 
use the 10.3.9 version. Users who want 64-bit can install the 10.6-only 
version.

-- Russell