stressing problem with Python < 3.3.3 / 2.7.6 and Mac OS 10.9 Mavericks

[Ned Deily]

In article <m1juu7$tmn$1 at ger.gmane.org>,
 Wolfgang Maier <wolfgang.maier at biologie.uni-freiburg.de> wrote:
> I'm not a regular MacPython user, but today I had to build Mac wheels 
> for different versions of Python. To test the wheel files I set up a 
> fresh Mac OS 10.9 Mavericks and and installed Python 3.2, 3.3, 3.4 from 
> the python.org download page on it. Then I struggled for the rest of the 
> afternoon to try to figure out why Python 3.2 crashed when I used my 
> package in interactive mode until I finally realized that it's not the 
> package but Python that's responsible.
> 
> Turns out that I had run into http://bugs.python.org/issue18458 which 
> probably every MacPython user here is so familiar with that the download 
> page doesn't even mention it ? ;)
> 
> Seriously, I think the official download page for a OS shouldn't offer 
> me a version that will not work well with the latest version of that OS 
> without a warning. Why not add such a warning (like: versions below will 
> crash in interactive mode on Mac OS 10.9) in the list of downloads at 
> https://www.python.org/downloads/mac-osx/ between Python 2.7.6 (the 
> first version with the issue fixed) and Python 3.2.5 (the last affected 
> version).

Sorry you ran into that problem.  Unfortunately, that's a general 
problem when using older versions of Python that are in 
security-fix-only mode, e.g. those no longer in active maintenance mode. 
Currently only 3.2.x and 3.3.x are in that category.

"The only changes made to a security branch are those fixing issues 
exploitable by attackers such as crashes, privilege escalation and, 
optionally, other issues such as denial of service attacks. Any other 
changes are not considered a security risk and thus not backported to a 
security branch."

https://docs.python.org/devguide/devcycle.html#security-branches

Fixes for new operating system releases do not fall in this category.  
There are certainly other problems that one will run into on platform 
releases newer than those supported and tested at the time of the final 
maintenance release.  However, we did add a warning about this 
particular issue to the release page of the final security release of 
2.6.x.  That warning is now copied into the 3.2.6 release page.

In the future, if you encounter problems with the python.org website, 
follow the Help link at the bottom of each page to the website issue 
tracker.

-- 
 Ned Deily,
 nad at acm.org