Python bindings by default

[John Ralls]

On Mar 2, 2012, at 3:29 AM, Quentin Stafford-Fraser wrote:

> Hello all - 
> 
> I'm wondering how difficult it would be for the Python bindings to be included in the standard distributions?
> 
> I suspect that many of the requests on the lists might be solved with a shortish Python plugin, but it's not a useful thing to suggest when most people can't take advantage of it.
> 
> I'm on a Mac, and, while I do have the knowledge and tools to go and compile everything from scratch, I haven't yet summoned up the willpower!  Many people would be much worse off than me!
> 
> There may be good reasons, of course, why it would make building the distros much harder, but I thought I'd ask!

For Macs, the reason is that each version of OSX provides a different version of Python*, and the python bindings C library has to link against libpython. So python would have to be included in the bundle, which is already over 100M thanks to having to ship a separate WebKit (one that integrates with Gtk). Worse, any python script that accesses the bindings would have to run the bundled python, not any of the ones provided by the OS.

*Yes, from Snow Leopard more than one is provided, and everything except Leopard provides 2.6, so if we dropped Leopard support we could do it.

Regards,
John Ralls