[BitPim-devel] Python 2.3

[Jerad Clark]

I thought I had seen this discussion prior, but I can't find it in my
mail archive, so I apologize in advance if this has been discussed
already.

------------------------------

I'm setting up my development environment, again, and in downloading
all the needed modules for a windows setup, I noticed that everything
needed for the project under Python 2.3, seems to also be available
for Python 2.4.

I also saw that the second bug-fix release for python 2.4 (2.4.2) was
released a couple of weeks ago at the end of September.

So my question is, has there been any thought in moving the project to
Python 2.4? I know the BitPim roadmap was recently discussed, maybe
this is something that could be added to it.

I have no idea what ramifications this would have on the project, or
if there would be any benefit, I was just wondering if it had been
considered.

*as a side note, the BitPim development page lists win32all as needed
(for windows), and it seems that t

[Joe Pham]

Post by Jerad Clark
So my question is, has there been any thought in moving the project
to Python 2.4?

Yes, and the answer is not yet. The reason is due to the murky interpretation of distributing the MS DLL file(s).

-Joe Pham



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[Roger Binns]

Post by Joe Pham

Post by Jerad Clark
So my question is, has there been any thought in moving the project
to Python 2.4?

Yes, and the answer is not yet. The reason is due to the murky
interpretation of distributing the MS DLL file(s).

The specific details:

On Windows Python 2.3 is compiled with Microsoft VC6. The binaries
will work on any recent (ie Win9x/2K/XP) version of Windows.

Python 2.4 is compiled with Microsoft VC7. That has some new supporting
runtime DLLs with names like msvcr71.dll (Microsoft Visual C Runtime).
Those DLLs are not available as standard on Windows systems.

If you have purchased a copy of VC7 then Microsoft gives you the right
to redistribute the DLLs with your program. However the license under
which they allow that is interpretted by many people to not allow
the redistribution with a GPL program at all and probaly not with
any other open source license either.

So quite simply if we moved to Python 2.4 we couldn't ship a Windows
version of BitPim.

For one thread on the subject (there are many) see
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/bccb45b7dae7ddd5/b021f49582b3bc76

or http://tinyurl.com/9b9w4

Roger