[Pythonmac-SIG] Pack Man issues on OS X 10.3.4

[Dinu Gherman]

Hi all,

while having some software and hardware upgrading fest I thought
I'd give Pack Man another try. Here are some comments.

First, I'm on OS X 10.3.4, giving a chance to Apple's Python 2.3.0
in /usr/bin, and I have downloaded and installed "MacPython addons
for 10.3" as explained on Jack's site:

   http://homepages.cwi.nl/~jack/macpython/download.html

Then I've started PackageManager.app in /Applications/MacPython-2.3.
While Pack Man tries loading the "standard database" I'm getting
immediately a warning panel, saying

   "Cannot open http://www.python.org/packman/version-0.3/\
    darwin-7.4.0-Power_macintosh.plist: HTTP Error 404: Not Found
    See MacPython Package Manager help page."

Unfortunately, this panel isn't very useful, since: 1) it has no
title, 2) the warning text is not selectable (to copy and paste into
emails, say), and 3) the reference to the "MacPython Package Manager
help page" is misleading because, although there is such a menu
entry, the page itself simply does not exist.

Looking on python.org/packman the latest database file I found is
version-0.3/darwin-7.3.0-Power_Macintosh.plist. Sadly, it's unclear
what version-0.3 means as Pack Man's "About" panel says nothing about
its version number. Nor does the finder say anything about that.

I believe Pack Man derives the URL for the so-called "standard data-
base" from the version of the running Darwin OS, in my case apparent-
ly darwin-7.4.0, for which there is no Pack Man database file on
python.org. This raises the question of how these files are created?

Then, I've loaded the file darwin-7.3.0-Power_Macintosh.plist which
unfortunately contains entries only to PyObjC v. 1.0, but not the
recently released 1.1. This raises questions about how these database
files are updated and if this could be automated/included in the re-
lease process of PyObjC somehow, perhaps?

In addition to all these, I see the following other issues with Pack
Man. 1) I'd like to read some advice about how to upgrade Apple's
Python inplace or what else to do with it while keeping the other
installed packages, 2) I'd like Pack Man to tell me where exactly
it's going to install something, and 3) I'd like to see either Pack
Man or Package Manager being used as a name allover the place. Also,
I'd like to be able to move Mac-Python-2.3 from /Applications to some
arbitrary directory, if that isn't possible, yet (not sure). And,
finally, Pack Man should really really be rewritten in Cocoa, but
everbody knows that, I guess.

BTW, I cannot see any "full" MacPython 2.3.3 (or even 2.3.4) for
OS X 10.3 on Jack's page. Some comments on what to expect here might
be of interest as well.

Thanks for reading down to here!

Regards,

Dinu

--
Dinu C. Gherman - http://python.net/~gherman
......................................................................
Get your Bushy protest panties now! - http://www.axisofeve.org