[lxml-dev] lxml Mac installation idea

[Stefan Behnel]

Hi,

Guntsche Michael wrote:
> On Nov 9, 2008, at 22:27, Stefan Behnel wrote:
> 
>> The users are not the problem. The system itself is, and the (lack  
>> of) updates
>> that Apple provides, which is only partly compensated by different  
>> package
>> distributions that, instead of updating the system, install things  
>> separately but within reach.
> 
> The reason for this is that nasty things may happen if you update the  
> system internal files.
> The main idea is just to NOT do that ever. On the other hand I do not  
> think that it will be a problem for the xml/xslt libs. But if a  
> security fix for the packages comes out your files will be overwritten  
> again, maybe without you noticing it. So best practice is to just  
> leave the system internal files and install updated files separately.  

On a normal system, that shouldn't pose a problem at all. But if lxml.etree
reports that the runtime linker linked it with the correct, up-to-date
library, and then it crashes due to a problem in the outdated system library,
which should not even have been loaded, I just can't call that the normal
behaviour of an "operating" system.


> I switched from fink to macports and never had a problem with my lxml  
> installations at all. I just make sure that xml-config and xslt-config  
> are taken from the correct location.

So you mean that you are building lxml manually and you do not use the
macports build, right? Is there anything you have to do at runtime, or does it
"just work" for you once it's built and installed?


> Well there is one thing though. Since the system python version AND  
> the python version from python.org is build as Universal Binary I had  
> to compile both libraries as Universal Binaries as well, but this is  
> not a big problem with macports.

That sounds perfectly reasonable to me.

Stefan