[Python-Dev] Fwd: Broken link to download (Mac OS X) (original) (raw)

C. Titus Brown ctb at msu.edu
Wed Apr 14 15:50:06 CEST 2010

On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 07:36:25AM +0200, "Martin v. L?wis" wrote:

>> In a wider sense of "to support", MacOS is certainly supported by >> Python. There is everything in the source code that you need to make >> Python run on a Mac. Just download the sources and compile them yourself. >> > And yet we don't regard the Windows release as complete until you have > built the binaries (for which service you deserve many thanks, by the way).

This phenomenon exists for a lot of other systems, as well. For example, we also support Solaris, but stopped providing Solaris binaries since Python 1.5 (when I last built binaries for Das Python-Buch). People still can get Solaris binaries from ActiveState or Sunfreeware; Sun also ships Python as part of the system.

I personally think the Mac is pretty important, as one of the big three consumer operating systems...

> Is the Mac platform one on which users will be happy to compile from > source? I know its users are savvier than Windows users, and have a > better tool set available to them, but they still seem to expect > downloadable installers.

The major difference in the "do it yourself" attitude is that Mac user get a compiler for free, as part of the operating system release, whereas for Windows, they have to pay for it (leaving alone VS Express for the moment).

Actually, I think the more pernicious factor is that a version of Python comes pre-installed on Mac OS X, which means the up-front demand is lower for a pre-compiled version. This is problematic, though, because that version of Python only gets upgraded with full releases of Mac OS X (which are not very well correlated with releases of Python, of course). So we have lots of Python installs out there that, in the absence of a precompiled binary version, can't be upgraded without installing the developer tools.

However, the real difference is motivation for contribution to open source projects. You normally contribute to scratch an itch. Unfortunately, these binaries don't come out such a motiviation. So the release manager roles are either altruistic, or rely on extrinsic motivations (money, reputation).

I don't know what to do about motivation but if there are barriers that we can lower, please let me know.

cheers, --titus

C. Titus Brown, ctb at msu.edu

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