[Bf-committers] solving the issues of switching to python 2.4 on Os X for next release

Joseph Gilbert jgilbert at TIGR.org
Thu Aug 25 16:55:58 CEST 2005


Willian Padovani Germano wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Thanks to all the info shared, we see that OS X, Irix, FreeBSD and 
> some Linux installations (depends on distros and also on users -- some 
> have newer installs, others don't) are not prepared for Python 2.4.
>
> I guess we should officially stay with 2.3 -- and use it in all 
> platforms which have issues with 2.4.
>
> Windows builds -- platform managers can decide better -- can use 2.4, 
> no problem (but the Python23.zip file needs to be substituted). For 
> Linux it'd be better to have versions for both, with 2.3 and 2.4. We 
> just need a volunteer to create the 2.4 Linux builds.
>
> Staying "officially" with 2.3 is the way to tell script coders that 
> they should not use 2.4 features for scripts meant to be compatible 
> with official Blender versions.
>
> What do you guys think?

I'm flexible :0  Windows can run 2.4 fine - i don't see a need to 
support old versions of python here (unless  someone feels differently). 
As stivs pointed out most of linux can too with the possible exceptions 
of freeBSD and debian. OSX and Irix has to build with 2.3 and Irix may 
have to build with something older than that. I guess the platform 
managers can decide what is right (or possible)  for their platform. We 
do probably need to make it clear (if we end up doing this) that 
offically bundled scripts must be able to run on python 2.3. 

Advantage:  Every platform would be able to detect an installation of 
python with no problems. Platform managers have more control over their 
version of python to be run.
Disadvantage: More distros on the download page (some for py2.3 some for 
py2.4 [maybe some for py2.5 later]).  Also we need to check to see if 
offical scripts are compatible with the 'common denominator' interpreter.

>
> About a bundle of modules for OS X:
>
> By the time the Windows one was created, someone (sorry) answered a 
> request I made and posted what modules were default (built statically) 
> in OS X and it was like Linux and others.  Windows comes with 
> considerably more C modules built statically with the interpreter 
> (math, time, etc.), that are dynamic libs under other systems.
>
> This made the Windows Python23.zip file small. To have the equivalent 
> functionality for others we'd need to include many more files.
>
It's not a horrible idea but it sure would make blender's installation 
much larger :( I compressed a set of .pyc's in the /lib directory and 
got 11 megs of files (just top level .pyc's in the lib directory not the 
sub-packages). Im sure this could be tweeked for osx, irix, etc however, 
it probably will be fairly large :/ 

Advantage: Every platform would be running a python2.4 emulation. Same 
number of distrubutions of blender we have now.
Disadvantage: It's not a full install - some non-builtins would probably 
still be missing. OSXers will still be trying to set their PYTHONPATH to 
access 'user installed' modules. The blender installation would increase 
by somewhere around 10megs is my guess.



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