[Python-Dev] Computed Goto dispatch for Python 2 (original) (raw)

Sturla Molden sturla.molden at gmail.com
Thu May 28 21:25:17 CEST 2015

Donald Stufft <donald at stufft.io> wrote:

Honestly, I’m on an OS that does ship Python (OS X) and part of me hopes that they stop shipping it. It’s very rare that someone ships Python as part of their OS without modifying it in some way, and those modifications almost always cause pain to some set of users (and since I work on pip, they tend to come to us with the weirdo problems). Case in point: Python on OS X adds some preinstalled software, but they put this pre-installed software before site-packages in sys.path, so pip can’t upgrade those pre-installed software packages at all.

Many Unix tools need Python, so Mac OS X (like Linux distros and FreeBSD) will always need a system Python. Yes, it would be great if could be called spython or something else than python. But the main problem is that it is used by end-users as well, not just the operating system.

Anyone who use Python on OSX should install their own Python. The system Python should be left alone as it is.

If the system Python needs updating, it is the responsibility of Apple to distribute the upgrade. Nobody should attempt to use pip to update the system Python. Who knows what side-effects it might have. Preferably pip should have a check for it and bluntly refuse to do it.

Sturla

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