[Numpy-discussion] OS X binaries for releases

[Russell E. Owen]

In article 
<CABL7CQjaCXp2GrtT8HVmaYAjRm0xmtn1Qt71WKdnbGq7dLU0cQ at mail.gmail.com>,
 Ralf Gommers <ralf.gommers at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> Building binaries for releases is currently quite complex and
> time-consuming. For OS X we need two different machines, because we still
> provide binaries for OS X 10.5 and PPC machines. I propose to not do this
> anymore. It doesn't mean we completely drop support for 10.5 and PPC, just
> that we don't produce binaries. PPC was phased out in 2006 and OS X 10.6
> came out in 2009, so there can't be a lot of demand for it (and the
> download stats at
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/numpy/files/NumPy/1.7.1/confirm this).
> 
> Furthermore I propose to not provide 2.6 binaries anymore. Downloads of 2.6
> OS X binaries were <5% of the 2.7 ones. We did the same with 2.4 for a long
> time - support it but no binaries.
> 
> So what we'd have left at the moment is only the 64-bit/32-bit universal
> binary for 10.6 and up. What we finally need to add is 3.x OS X binaries.
> We can make an attempt to build these on 10.8 - since we have access to a
> hosted 10.8 Mac Mini it would allow all devs to easily do a release
> (leaving aside the Windows issue). If anyone has tried the 10.6 SDK on 10.8
> and knows if it actually works, that would be helpful.
> 
> Any concerns, objections?

I am in strong agreement.

I'll be interested to learn how you make binary installers for python 
3.x because the standard version of bdist_mpkg will not do it. I have 
heard of two other projects (forks or variants of bdist_mpkg) that will, 
but I have no idea of either is supported.

I have been able to building packages on 10.8 using 
MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.6 that will run on 10.6, so it will probably 
work. However I have run into several odd problems over the years 
building a binary installer on a newer system only to find it won't work 
on older systems for various reasons. Thus my personal recommendation is 
that you build on 10.6 if you want an installer that reliably works for 
10.6 and later. I keep an older computer around for this reason. In fact 
that is one good reason to drop support for ancient operating systems 
and PPC.

-- Russell