En Sat, 19 May 2007 03:24:15 -0300, walterbyrd <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
escribió:
> My guess is that some of the C code used to develop Python is the same
> between the different Python distros, but much of the code is unique
> to the particular platform. If that is the case, then the C code may
> not be very portable.
Well, your guess was wrong. The core CPython code is the same on all
platforms; of course it uses #define/#ifdef/etc. where appropiate, but
it's not a mess, and not so much code is conditionally compiled.
The Python developers take special care on portability - the C language
itself (C89 is currently used) is pretty standard, but you have to be
careful on how you write your code.
> But, I can often take the same python code, and run it on MacOS,
> Linux, FreeBSD, and Windows. Often I can do this even if the app has a
> gui interface.
Because someone has taken out all the differences, so you don't have to
struggle with them yourself. GUI toolkits: some libraries "draw" the whole
thing and manage all the user interaction themselves so they're basically
portable but never have the native "look&feel" (tcl/tk); other rely on the
native buttons and controls for each platform, but providing a homogeneous
view for the programmer (wxWidgets). Anyway, they work across platforms
because "someone" has already worked on the differences for you - using C.
Both menctioned libraries are written in C (wx in C++), and Python
provides a convenient wrapper for them.
Even on the Python side, some libraries do one thing or another depending
on the platform (cf: subprocess). The good thing is that *you* as a
developer, don't have to worry about the differences; many are managed by
Python itself internally, and many are worked on by other people on top of
this. webbrowser.open('your favourite url') "just works" and does "the
right thing" because of these efforts.
--
Gabriel Genellina
--
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