Re: python on powerpc
On Tue, Jun 17, 2003 at 10:23:46AM -0400, christophe barbe wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 16, 2003 at 11:45:13PM -0400, David M. Cooke wrote:
> > On Mon, Jun 16, 2003 at 11:03:34AM -0400, christophe barbe wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > I was wondering if you shared my impression that most python programs
> > > are partially broken on powerpc. The last three programs written in
> > > python that I have tried are gdeskcal, straw and eroaster.
> >
> > "Most" != 3. "Most" python programs I use under powerpc, I have no
> > problems with. Some fiddling with numbers from apt-cache shows ~70
> > packages that depend on python2.2 that aren't python modules.
>
> "Most" != "impression that most"
> And comparing 'most' to a number is just plain stupid. As you point out,
> ~70 packages depend on python2.2 (including dia, gnumeric, ... that are
> NOT written in python) and 3 is a significant subset of it.
A bit more drilling gives 35 packages that depend on python2.2, w/o
python in the package name, and don't depend on libc6. There are ~3
python libraries in that list.
3 is still much smaller than 35 :-)
> > Note that the three programs you mention share also python2.2-gtk2 as a
> > dependency; I'd look there for GUI problems. The corruption in gdeskcal
> > is likely an endian issue (which is not an uncommon problem when
> > programs are ported from x86 to ppc).
>
> Interesting. Do you really mean that software written in an interpreted
> language need to be ported? Or you just don't know what you are talking
> about?
I don't think you can program anything (large and) interesting in a pure
cross-platform manner -- at some point you're making some assumption
about the system (just read the os module documentation for the
"Availability" comments). But pure python running on two different linux
systems should be fine; although there are still places the different
architectures make an appearance. For instance, the struct module, and
I've been bitten by pickle (a while ago) when moving a binary pickle
from an x86 to an Alpha.
C extensions (like python2.2-gtk2) are a different matter from pure
Python -- they'll have the same problems that regular C programs have
when moving between architectures. Endian issues seems to bite the most
with programs that manipulate images or audio.
> straw network related problem is not caused by python2.2-gtk2, neither
> is eroaster (parsing bug). But straw i18n support is broken and this is
> certainly related to python2.2-gtk2.
Looking at eroaster's bugs, it appears it's a problem on x86 also.
--
|>|\/|<
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|David M. Cooke http://arbutus.physics.mcmaster.ca/dmc/
|cookedm@physics.mcmaster.ca
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