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Sorry, but I beg to differ. Actually I am a bit annoyed at the position that I see is taken by some Mac OS X Python proponents. Python itself is still a unix application in many cases and Mac OS X is still a unix environment in many cases. It is quite normal for unix systems to have several installed versions of interpreters. There are good reasons why you do stuff like that - mostly because you don't want old stuff to break just because the system delivers a new version.
Production systems at work still run stuff written with Python 1.5 (I use Debian GNU/Linux at work, that makes it ridiculous easy to run several Python versions in parallel) and there is just no need to migrate that stuff over to newer Python releases. You don't get paid for mental masturbation, you get paid for solving problems. When there is no problem, don't try to solve one. Nobody will applause you if you port a working and bugfree application to a new, possibly bugridden version of infrastructure, introducing possible new bugs and gaining no immediate benefits.
Actually I think if Mac OS X Python doesn't work nicely with different installed Python installations, it definitely needs to be fixed. There is no excuse to stomp over already installed directories if you install different versions. There is no excuse to install into the wrong place. There is no excuse to not take multiple versions into account. This problem was solved long ago for Python and should be solved in similar ways (version dependend system library paths) with the Mac OS X version. Distutils does it right on allmost all plattforms I know of, there is absolutely no excuse if distutils does it wrong with Mac OS X! This is not a feature, this is a grave bug!
Sorry, folks, but you can't request to be taken a serious application plattform if you can't solve such a trivial problem in a stable and reliable way. Systems are much more complicated than your normal standard single user machine with one hacker working on it. Administrators won't like you if you can't go the easy migration path. And do you really expect people to rewrite Python applications for Mac OS X 10.4 just because that happens to use Python 2.4 or whatever release is current at that time? Sure, Python is quite nice with regard to backward compatibility, but the best backward compatibility still is to run a backward version!
And yes, I do know that Apple itself has it's part (and not a small one - Mac OS X System upgrades are a major pain in the arse, especially if compared to systems like Debian GNU/Linux where upgrades where allmost perfected for admins) in this dilemma, this rant addresses both Apple and OSS developers. Get your work done. Do it the way it's supposed to be done. Don't take Windows attitudes.
Sure, you now can start and flame me. On the other hand, you could sit down and solve the problem, fix the bugs.
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