[PyQt] question about installation best practices on OS X

[Darren Dale]

On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 6:55 PM, Robert Bobbson <rbobbson at yahoo.com> wrote:
> One thing you are going to find out is that Apple isn't the quickest on the draw with updating things like Python.  It's
> only recently that they made a move to anything near the 2.6 line, so I
> have long since given up on using the stock python if I'm interested in
> being up to date version-wise.
>
> With some reservation, I'll
> recommend using something like macports to manage these things as they
> are maintained up to date, and it takes care of dependencies and other
> fun things like library paths, etc.  MacPorts sets things up in /opt.
>
> The reason for the
> reservation is that at the time I built PyQt and all the supporting
> packages, none of them appeared to have a binary version available for Snow Leopard (this was ~2 weeks ago now).  So, that meant the source had to be
> downloaded and built from scratch.  That took about 12 hours on a 2
> year old MacBook Pro.
> That didn't include the hour or two of tweaking the source packages to
> get around some errors and warnings that were slowing down the process
> even further.  It brought back warm fuzzy feelings for the Gentoo box
> that I just retired a little while ago.
>
> As those source only
> options are replaced with binary packages, you should see install
> performance comparable to Debian/Ubuntu/RedHat and their package
> management tools, with all the corresponding benefits of having a
> framework keep track of versions and dependencies.
>
> Even if you don't use macports for pyqt, you might consider it for managing a whole slew of other apps, just like you would on a linux box or a windows+cygwin box.

Thanks for the suggestion. I have been using Gentoo for about 5 years
and Ubuntu for 2, and am trying macports now.