[Chicago] Anyone using MacPorts Python exclusively?

[Kumar McMillan]

On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 11:28 AM, Chris McAvoy <chris.mcavoy at gmail.com> wrote:
> Macports (macports.org, formerly darwinports) seems to have come a
> long way since I last looked at it.  It still seems like a little bit
> of a all or nothing approach.  Anyone using the MacPorts Python
> exclusively?  I'm on Leopard nowadays, and am liking their version of
> 2.5, but I like that I can get a bunch of difficult to compile modules
> (I'm looking at you lxml) via MacPorts easily.  The only off-putting
> bit is that you really have to go all in.
>
> Anyone all in?  Anyone want to hold my hand and tell me it will be alright?

Unfortunately, it's all or nothing.  You have to pick.  If you want my
opinion: pick the python.org Framework over macports.

To elaborate, if you install with the Framework installer and think to
yourself, hey, macports will build this c python module for me and you
install it via ports then ports fails to recognize that you've
*already* installed python so it builds a new one.  This will pretty
much render your newly built module unusable unless you ditch the
Framework in favor of macports.  This, to me, is a huge loss compared
to the minor gain of conveniently running "python setup.py install"
for you after installing all dependencies.  I used purely macports
python for a while and had so many little problems with it that I now
do what Cosmin does, I build any dependency I need *with* macports and
then easy_install the python c module linking to the new libs and
voila.

Keep in mind that the python.org Framework installer used to really
suck but as of 2.5 it is solid.  macports python has come a long way
but I think the python.org Framework installer has made greater
strides.


btw, for mac users, I just spent a long time figuring out a patch to
lxml 2.0 so that it worked right on Mac OS X Leopard.  Phew.  Patch
will be in 2.0.6, but until then you need...

port install libxml2 libxslt
export PATH=/opt/local/bin:$PATH
export CFLAGS='-flat_namespace'
sudo easy_install http://codespeak.net/lxml/lxml-2.0.5.tgz

...to get it working.  Details:
http://codespeak.net/pipermail/lxml-dev/2008-May/thread.html#3632