Re: GNOME 2.20 Python version

["Gustavo J. A. M. Carneiro" <gjc inescporto pt>]

On Qua, 2007-03-14 at 13:18 +0200, Fernando Herrera wrote:
> On 3/14/07, Murray Cumming <murrayc murrayc com> wrote:
> > On Tue, 2007-03-13 at 12:52 -0500, Shaun McCance wrote:
> > > If a program works correctly with Python 2.4, is there
> > > actually a danger of it not working correctly with 2.5?
> > > That sounds broken.
> >
> > Python 2.4 and 2.5 install in parallel so already-built applications
> > will not be broken.
> 
> In the past, when we included python 2.4 in the jubuild bootstrap
> module I had lot of problems when building/running python programs on
> FC. I think that different compilation options resulted in binary
> incompatible python modules (some UCS size or something like that)
> 
> 1) when running my jhbuild session, trying to run a system python
> program like yum didn't work, because it was using python from jhbuild
> and tried to load a module (.so) from system python, that where
> incompatible
> 
> 2) For building some apps under my jhbuild environements I had to
> compile a lot of external python modules to make the app build,
> because python from jhbuild refused to use my system dir modules. Some
> of them were pyrex, twisted, numeric, etc...
> 
> So, questions:
> a) Is the binary incompatibility depending on configure options stills present?

  Yes, but that has nothing to do with different python versions, just
different python builds.

> b) if yes, could we build python 2.5 in jhbuild autodetecting and
> matching system python configuration?

  It could be done; just remove python from the bootstrap modules (and
let people remove any /opt/gnome-devel/bin/python* that they have, or
whatever).  But then people have to define PYTHONPATH correctly.  Or let
"jhbuild shell/run" do it..

  Personally I prefer to have a custom built python, for better
debugging.  But I would understand if people want to use the system
python instead.  In fact, using the system python by default would allow
GNOME to be tested with multiple Python versions at the same time; I
think it may be a very good idea just because of that...

-- 
Gustavo J. A. M. Carneiro
<gjc inescporto pt> <gustavo users sourceforge net>
The universe is always one step beyond logic.