Re: [Visualpython-users] VPython on OSX

[Martin C. <cos...@wa...>]

Jonathan Brandmeyer wrote:
> On Tue, 2006-05-30 at 16:48 -0400, Aaron Titus wrote:
>> Are you saying that Mac OS X users won't need to use X11 anymore?
> 
> Not at all.  You still need X11 and fink.  Before, Apple's compiler (a
> bastardized gcc) was too broken to build and run Boost.Python + VPython.
> The build of gcc shipped with XCode 2.3 works fine.

This has worked for a while already (since xcode-2.1 I think, in Fink at 
least since August 2005).

> Another user asked me what he would need to do on an Intel-based mac to
> get VPython up and running.  The answer is that until the fink
> developers get fink working for either fat binaries or a custom
> i386-only distribution, you shouldn't bother.  You can try the beta that
> is posted on fink.sourceforge.net, but don't get your hopes up.

The Fink packages for boost1.33 and for vpython 3.2.9 (packages 
visual-py23 and visual-py24, depending on which version of python you 
want to run it with) are building fine on mac/intel. They are in the 
stable tree, too, so that they will appear in the next binary 
distribution. The current (somewhat non-public for reasons I don't 
understand) binary distribution of Fink for Mac/intel only contains the 
old version 2.1.9 of visual-py23, unfortunately.

> We don't have an intel mac to test on.  If an OS-X guru would like to
> speak up, I would be interested in what it takes to crank out fat
> binaries from the command line on PowerPC, as Apple only sees fit to
> describe the process from within XCode.

Universal (fat) binaries are not interesting for the user. They may make 
life easier for those who distribute binaries, but it is not much more 
complicated to distribute separate binaries for ppc and for intel. Fink 
has separate binary distributions for ppc and for intel, and the user 
sees only the one corresponding to the the currently used machine.

-- 
Martin