[Python-Dev] OS X Installer for 3.0.1 and supported versions (original) (raw)

Ronald Oussoren ronaldoussoren at mac.com
Sat Feb 28 16:44:19 CET 2009

On 27 Feb, 2009, at 1:57, Ned Deily wrote:

In article <rowen-8731E0.13531325022009 at news.gmane.org>, "Russell E. Owen" <rowen at u.washington.edu> wrote:

I want to follow up on this a bit. In the past if the Mac Python installer was built on a machine that did NOT have a locally installed Tcl/Tk then it would fail to work with a locally installed Tcl/Tk: Python would segfault when trying to use Tkinter.

The solution was to build the Mac python installer on a machine with a locally installed Tcl/Tk. The resulting installer package would work on all systems -- with or without locally installed Tcl/Tk. So...has this problem been worked around, or is the Mac installer still built on a machine that has a locally installed Tcl/Tk? Ronald will have to answer that for sure since he built the installer for 3.0.1. However, it seems to be true that the most recent python.org OS X installers will always favor a /System/Library/Frameworks/{Tcl/Tk}:

That's correct, I don't have a locally installed Tcl/Tk on my laptop
at the moment and couldn't arrange for one in time for the 3.0.1
release.

BTW. The fact that this should result in crashes when a user does have
a locally installed Tcl/Tk is new to me. The reason earlier builds of
the OSX installer were build with a locally installed Tcl/Tk is that
several Tkinter users indicated that the system version is
significantly less useful than a local install.

Most people who makes serious use of Tkinter presumably have a locally installed Tcl/Tk because the version that Apple provides is ancient and is missing many important bug fixes and performance enhancements.

Also, a somewhat related issue: Tcl/Tk 8.4 is no longer maintained. All development work is going on in Tcl/Tk 8.5. Presumably Apple will transition one of these days, and at that point we may need a separate Mac Python installer for the older operating systems vs. the newer. Yes, something will need to be done for that if Snow Leopard does have newer versions. Thanks for bringing this up!

Do Python 2.6 and 3.0 support building with Tcl/Tk 8.5? I vaguely
recall messages about issues on python-dev but don't know if those
issues were real and/or solved.

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