Re: Optional BSD package is required for (useable) Python?

> How many people do you know who don't install the BSD layer? And how many of
> those are non-geeks who couldn't easily go back and install it? You don't
> have to worry about geeks. I can't imagine there's any OP who does a Custom
> Install of OS X, chooses not to install BSD, and then needs Python.

My point isn't so much "who here doesn't have BSD installed" so much 
as "if you try to produce commercial software using Python".  After 
all, "we" all have it installed, but does everybody in a consumer 
base?  No.

If you embed python, you're half OK (the framework will be there, so 
everything can be linked when launched), but it will almost certainly 
fail in unexpected ways when you try to use it.

If you try to write something using PyObjC (or pygame, or whatever), 
those are probably going to fail spectacularly (well, at least 
mysteriously to the end user).

As far as I'm concerned, this puts a potentially serious limitation 
on using Python in a commerical project, since it requires adding in 
something in an installer to check for the presence of the "optional" 
install, and then bail out of the install if it doesn't find it, 
requiring the user to find their original OS X install disks to 
install an optional thing, which they many not have handy, and then 
potentially go through an re-install the security updates, and only 
then can they install your application.  This seems to be a very high 
barrier for a (fortunately) small subset of your user base, but, 
depending on the application & target market, this may be a 
show-stopper (not to mention something that some reviewers may 
complain about).

So any idea how we can get this out of the "optional" BSD layer 
install?  (after all, /usr/bin/perl is in the base install)

--
Glenn Andreas                      gandreas@xxxxxxxxxxxx 
mondo blobbo, Cythera, Theldrow, oh my!
Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know

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