Re: [Pyobjc-dev] Detecting Python interpreters on startup

[Just v. R. <ju...@le...>]

Dinu Gherman wrote:

> The person uses Fink Python 2.3 on 10.2.6, so I think that if he
> never touched his /usr/bin/python

When he wrote """When I tried to run it on my Mac (10.2.6) by
double-clickign the application, it started and then closed without any
screen coming up""" I immediately thought: his /usr/bin/python is broken
or gone. We'll never know for sure until we see what's in his
Console.app.

[ ... ]
> The real question for me is: given multiple options for locations
> and versions of installed Python interpreters on OS X, is there
> any possibility to deploy an application that has the following
> properties:
> 
>    1. it finds and uses the one Python interpreter if there is
>       only one,
> 
>    2. it can be told at launch time or via some kind of config
>       file before launch time which interpreter to use,
> 
>    3. it makes its own "best choice" for 2.
> 
> I think nobody wants to maintain different packages for people be-
> longing to either Fink-, Apple-, Mac-Python and any other camps.
> And for testing with different interpreters (even of the same camp)
> this would also be very useful.

It's moderately safe to make your app dependent on Jag's 2.2 (most
things should work when running under Panther, but you can't know for
sure. It's safe if Jaguar is all you need to support (unless someone
breaks his sistem by messing with /usr/bin/python).

Extension modules are not always compatible between Python versions. Due
to sheer luck it appears that extension modules linked against a flat
unix build also work when used with a framework build, but the other way
round does not work.

If you really want to use an installed version, you should just specify
exactly which one.

For end user apps, the best thing to do is INCLUDE the Python you're
testing and building with with your app bundle. Luckily bundlebuilder
makes this very easy. Use --standalone, with --strip to reduce the size
of the bundle. Using Python 2.3 enables zipimport, making your .app
smaller yet. I built a tiny standalone PyObjC app today, and compressed
with StuffIt it's a 1 meg download. This includes a (stripped down
version of) Python.framework. "python2.3 buildapp.py --standalone
--strip build" was all there was to it.

Just