[Python-Dev] python, lipo and the future? (original) (raw)

Ronald Oussoren ronaldoussoren at mac.com
Sun Sep 17 18:15:22 CEST 2006

On Sep 17, 2006, at 2:51 PM, Jack Howarth wrote:

I am curious if there are any plans to support the functionality provided by lipo on MacOS X to create a python release that could operate at either 32-bit or 64-bit on Darwin ppc and Darwin intel?

We already support universal binaries for PPC and x86, adding PPC64
and x86-64 to the mix should be relatively straigthforward, but it
isn't a complete no-brainer.

One problem is that python's configure script detects the sizes of
various types and those values will be different on 32-bit and 64-bit
flavours. Another problem is that Tiger's 64-bit support is pretty
limited, basically just the Unix APIs, which means you cannot have a
4-way universal python interpreter without upsetting anyone with a 64- bit machine :-).

My understanding was that the linux developers are very interested in lipo as well as an approach to avoid the difficulty of maintaining separate lib directories for 32 and 64-bit libraries. Thanks in advance for any insights on this issue.

OSX uses the MachO binary format which natively supports fat
binaries, I don't know if ELF (the linux binary format) support fat
binaries.

Ronald

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