[Zope3-dev] System python for *development*? (Was: 3.3.0 tag broken by zc.catalog eggs?)

[Marius Gedminas]

On Mon, May 21, 2007 at 10:44:47AM -0400, Jim Fulton wrote:
> On May 21, 2007, at 1:39 AM, Martijn Pieters wrote:
> >Come again? Using the system python when developing has always been
> >fine;
> 
> No. It has never been fine for any aspect of development.  If you  
> develop with your system Python and deploy with a custom environment,  
> then you've added a variable that is different between the two  
> environments.  Also, system Python's are often hobbled in ways that  
> hurt development.
> 
> I sometimes get really weird error reports that are traced to system  
> Pythons.  People who report problems to me that result from using a  
> system Python make me angry and make me want to not answer their  
> questions or otherwise help them any more.

I'd love to hear some anecdotes about this.  The ones I know about:

  * distros releasing newer point versions of Python with security fixes
    (cgi.FieldStorage) that break Zope 3

  * distros splitting the Python profiler into a separate package due to
    licencing problems, with a "helpful" stub that prints an informational
    message (go apt-get install python-profiler) instead of raising
    ImportError.

seem to be minor inconveniences rather than show-stoppers to me.  I'd
love to hear real horror stories.

Marius Gedminas
-- 
Westheimer's Discovery:
        A couple of months in the laboratory can
        frequently save a couple of hours in the library.
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