[Python-Dev] [Pydotorg] Should we help pythonmac.org? (original) (raw)

Jesse Noller jnoller at gmail.com
Tue Aug 19 16:51:41 CEST 2008

On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 8:51 AM, Fred Drake <fdrake at acm.org> wrote:

On Aug 19, 2008, at 3:45 AM, fuzzyman at mail2.webfaction.com wrote:

I thought (relative Mac newbie), the standard advice was that if you want to install extension modules then you should install your own version of Python and not mess with the system version. My understanding is that if there is a system Python, you shouldn't change it. Ever. System Python's are for other components of the system; you can use them, but shouldn't modify them. Including installing or updating packages in the site-packages directory. At Zope Corporation, we use a clean Python for all development and deployments. Nothing gets installed into the site-packages, because different applications want different packages (or different versions), and we want to deploy with what we test with. Meaning that you have to maintain two Python installs - something that hasn't been a problem for me yet. So even if Mac OS ships with Python 2.6, many users will still want to install their own version. Indeed. I've never had to do anything to maintain the system Python on Mac OS X. It's there, Mac OS X does what it will with it, and I use my private (and squeaky clean!) Python installations. -Fred -- Fred Drake

Just to add to this - with the advent of PEP 370[1], we now have the ability to use per-user site-packages directories. This neatly sidesteps the problem (for the most part) of tainting the system installations of python directly.

As for the Mac issue - as a mac user/developer - I only install "big ticket" packages into the system path - for everything else, I either use virtualenv.py, a custom python install or the PYTHONPATH overrides.

I've personally never used a python distribution from macports or fink - if I need a custom build, I'll do it myself, rather than install something into the /opt/ tree macports uses - I've had too many issues with library/binary conflicts with the pre-installed libraries/tools from twiddling with PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH to add the /opt tree to my environment in order to get compiles/tools to play nice.

-Jesse

[1] http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0370/

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