Re: can I get python (2.4) as 32bit

[Sebastian Haase <haase@msg.ucsf.edu>]

On Tuesday 28 February 2006 01:20, A J Stiles wrote:
> On Monday 27 Feb 2006 21:55, Sebastian Haase wrote:
> > Hi,
> > this might sound like an unreasonable question:
> > BUT I have lots of compiled (numerical) python packages and starting the
> > (default) 64bit python cannot use those.
> >
> > So I was wondering if anybody here had a similar issue and/or knows about
> > a python2.4 version (for AMD64)  that is compiled as 32bit
>
> I would have thought it would not be too difficult to translate a compiled
> Python program from one architecture for another.  Python is still
> basically an interpreted language; the "compiled" form is just more quickly
> machine-readable at the expense of human-readability, and the bytecode
> should be decompilable.  You might lose variable and function names; but as
> long as compiling the decompiler output produces the same resulting
> bytecode as the original object code, we can deem the decompiler output
> equivalent to the original source.  This should then be compilable under a
> different architecture.

Thanks for the reply,
I was not talking about byte code. I'm talking about "real" C (dynamic) 
libraries - *.so files - that I am building and maintaining for many 32bit 
machines.  (Including the wxPython "library")
So I learned yesterday that you cannot use an 32-bit dynamic library if your 
application (/usr/bin/python2.2) is 64-bit. (ref. the 'file' command)

I don't know exactly how chroot works - but I assume that it also would be 
quite a mess, since I would have to install (and maintain) two complete sets 
of Debian installations !!

It should be possible to build python from its source and just use the "-m32" 
compiler option.  Did anyone compile a package on AMD-64 with that option ?
Or can I copy the application (or the debian package ?)  from my 32-bit 
machine and just /use/ it ...

Thanks,
Sebastian Haase