[Python-Dev] Installation on Macs (original) (raw)

Ronald Oussoren ronaldoussoren at mac.com
Wed Aug 15 11:37:55 CEST 2012

On 15 Aug, 2012, at 11:30, Ned Deily <nad at acm.org> wrote:

3. Download instructions and Xcode Jesse: I also concur with Raymond that the download/install instructions could be simplified. Noting for users that rather than downloading Xcode, they can just download the OSX Command Line Tools installer and easyinstall/pip/etc will just work would also be nice The Mac section of the Python docset is woefully out-of-date (from long before I got involved!) and I plan to give it a major update for 3.3.0. The whole business of what's needed to build extension modules on OS X got much more complicated with Xcode 4 (the default for 10.7 and 10.8) and each minor release of Xcode 4 has brought new changes. The introduction of the stand-alone Command Line Tools (with Xcode 4.2?) was a nice addition but there are gotchas with using it, for example, extension building with current Python 3.2.3 installers do not work out-of-the-box with the CLT because the CLT do not provide SDKs. 2.7.3 is better but neither of the current 32-bit installers will work out of the box with Xcode 4. A lot of work has gone into 3.3.0 to make extension building and building Python itself play more nicely with Xcode 4 without breaking support for older versions. Some subset of that support will get backported for 2.7.4 and 3.2.4 once 3.3.0 is done. Also, if network bandwidth and disk space usage are not major concerns, it may now be procedurally easier for most people to install Xcode 4 than the Command Line Tools package since the former is now available for free download from the Mac App Store while the latter still requires registering for a (free) Apple Developer Id and download from the Apple Developer site. And since Xcode 4 has been partitioned up into smaller downloadable components, the Xcode download is smaller as it is not necessary to download everything (including iOS development tools) as was the case with Xcode 3.

Another advantage of installing all of Xcode is that the appstore will warn when a new version is available, and when you start Xcode you can still install the command-line tools (and Xcode will warn when that installation is out of date).

Ronald

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