[issue11229] Make the Mac installer more like the Windows installer

[Ronald Oussoren]

Ronald Oussoren added the comment:

I'm +1 on the general idea, but have some remarks anyway:

1) "for all users" vs. "current user"

This likely requires a post-install script to fix up the load command's in binaries: on OSX binaries contain absolute paths to the libraries the link with (which for the binary installers includes libpython). This is easy to do with macholib, but that's not in the stdlib.

An alternative is to use @loader_path, to link with a path relative to the executable, but that would mean you can no longer copy the python binary an expect it to work (which currently does work for framework installs)

2) Tcl/Tk: this is currently not included in the binary installer, although it might be better to start doing that given the problems described in <http://www.python.org/download/mac/tcltk/>. The disadvantage is that the size of the installer would grow significantly.

3) A pre-install hook that cleans up previous installations of the same feature release would be nice, currently upgrade can keep junk files alive.

4) We're already installing IDLE and the Python documentation in the Application folder (as well as the mac-specific Python Launcher and a tool for updating the command-line shell profile). Adding a link for starting the command-line in Terminal.app is a good idea.

5) I'm not sure about an uninstall option, while it would be nice to
have such an option it would also be custom code that runs with increased privileges (for the "all users" install). Sadly enough Apple doesn't have an uninstall option in their packaging solution.

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nosy: +ronaldoussoren

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Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue11229>
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