Upgrading Python Article

[Michael Foord]

http://www.voidspace.org.uk/python/articles/upgrading_python.html

I've been looking at whether to upgrade immediately from Python 2.3 to
Python 2.4 or postpone it. This is my first `major version change`, so
I've come up against the usual windoze (tm) problem - upgrading python
breaks all my extension modules.

I've been looking into the issues, what modules do I use, can I
compile them myself ? etc... and the result is a brief article on the
issues round upgrading.

I thought I would share (awww.... aint that nice).

Flames welcomed.

Regards,


Fuzzy

http://www.voidspace.org.uk/atlantibots/pythonutils.html

 

[Jive]

I had to back out of 2.4. In time I'll upgrade.

It's not really fair to blame windoze for the incompatibility. It is
possible to make software backward compatible with shared libraries. But
you need a plan. The windoze plan is based on COM in its various guises.
Of course, it's not standard outside of the windoze world.

D.

 

[Fuzzyman]

Sure - I don't really *blame* windoze for the problem. It's just more
of a pain upgrading python version on windows. As I said it's given me
an opportunity to work out which extension modules I'm really using !

In actual fact I admire windows, there's an awful lot that goes on
beneath the hood. Microsofts dubious business practises mean that they
get a lot of stick - but windows is very sophisticated.

It is produced with a different ethos though, not *just* the fact that
it is closed source. It is designed for users, whereas Lunix is
designed for programmers. This means that setting up a compiler isn't a
straightforward process (See the references in the article).

Microsoft do now give away their .NET optimising compiler - but
distutils can't be configured to use it without hacking into it. This
means it's more tricky than configuring distutils to use gcc from
mingw. I'm still not sure whether that will work for python 2.4 - I had
got the impression it wouldn't. On the other hand the microsoft
compiler is *better* than gcc anyway

Regards,
Fuzzyman
http://www.voidspace.org.uk/atlantibots/pythonutils.html

 

[JanC]

Fuzzyman schreef:

On the other hand the microsoft
compiler is *better* than gcc anyway

It's better at optimising, but it doesn't support standard C & C++. ;-)

 

[Tim Roberts]

Fuzzyman schreef:


It's better at optimising, but it doesn't support standard C & C++. ;-)

I don't think that's fair. Visual C++ 7.1 is signficantly better at
compliance than their past compilers.

 

[JanC]

Tim Roberts schreef:

I don't think that's fair. Visual C++ 7.1 is signficantly better at
compliance than their past compilers.

AFAIK that's only for C++, not for C...?

 

[Tim Roberts]

Tim Roberts schreef:


AFAIK that's only for C++, not for C...?

Yes. Microsoft has largely chosen to ignore C99. According to the Visual
Studio team, there has simply been no demand.