Clark's Tech Blog

OK, I know everyone is talking about Snow Leopard but I figured I ought put something up here for all the Google searchers struggling with more technical upgrades. First off Python is now 2.6.1. No it obviously didn’t upgrade all your modules. So let me tell you how to solve that problem — it ends up being more complex than it first appears. Then I’ll address other issues in a subsequent post. There are a few gotchas.

First, you must install the XCode install. It’s not installed by default. If you get an error “unable to execute gcc-4.2: No such file or directory” that is probably the problem. (Yeah, I was an idiot at first trying to upgrade things)

Next the old Python 2.5 libraries are actually still there. Look in /LibraryPython/2.5/site-packages. The easiest way to reinstall them is just to run easy_install, where applicable. (Not all my modules were put in the easy_install repositories)

For me I’ve done the following: (Feel free to cut and paste as all these are pretty useful modules and many of my scripts depend upon them)

sudo easy_install appscript
sudo easy_install MySQL-python
sudo easy_install pysqlite
sudo easy_install titlecase
sudo easy_install PdbTextMateSupport
sudo easy_install simplejson
sudo easy_install mako
sudo easy_install numpy
sudo easy_install scipy
sudo easy_install ipython
sudo easy_install Matplotlib
sudo easy_install SymPy

There were a few others there (including several Levenshtein distance modules) but I decided that several I just didn’t need. If I find a script that needs them I may reinstall.

Most of the above are fairly easy to understand I suppose.

Titlecase is what I use to fix titles in iTunes.

Pysqlite reads a common database format used by many Mac and iPhone applications.

MySQL-python is a Python module for working with MySQL, a far more powerful database. (Often used by blogging software like WordPress but quite useful as a full database)

Simplejson reads a structured Python like dictionary into a Python dictionary. (I used it in my get iTunes album name script to access the iTunes store database)

PdbTextMateSupport provides rudimentary debugging features to TextMate.

Mako is a template library I use to auto-generate HTML mail for invoices.

NumPy and SciPy are scientific computing modules. I don’t use them that often, but when I do… NumPy is also used in Sage, a free open source Mathematica alternative, which makes use of Python and iPython extensively. (I should add that while it’s $3000 cheaper than Mathematica it is nowhere near as good) Note that SciPy requires fortran and a few other MacPorts installs. (We’ll cover that next)

Matplotlib is a nice graphing system.

SymPy is something I’ve not used but which I’ve been curious about for quite some time. It’s a “pure Python” alternative to Sage which in turn is an alternative to Mathematica. Check out the tutorial to decide if you’re interested.

The PyObjC is a tad different as it comes with Snow Leopard. I’ve not played around with it yet. Probably checking the PyObjC website every now and then for the latest version would be wise.

After all this I cleaned out the Python 2.5 module directory.

Related posts:

1. Upgrading to Snow Leopard Part 4: MySQL
2. Upgrading to Snow Leopard Part 5: The Python Gripes
3. Upgrading to Snow Leopard Part 3: MacPorts
4. Upgrading to Snow Leopard Part 2: Minor Tips
5. Upgrading to Snow Leopard Part 6: 64bit vs. 32bit
6. Upgrading to Snow Leopard Part 7: One Month Later
7. To Python 3 part 2
8. To Python 3 part 3: 3 Denied