Does anyone know what Apple's plans are for MacOSX introduction to broad mass market.? Will it be the default AppleOS by end of 2001?
Zope-2.3a1 runs with Python-1.5.2. I've run Zope-2.2.x on MacOSX and it runs great. At some point someone with time, or a paying customer, or both will get an Open Database (MySQL, PostegreSQL, ... ) running on MacOSX and we'll have a full fledged solution.
If one needs to install Zope __now__ on non-MacOSX machines, what is the story?
Zope apparently has some problems with Python 2.0 and requires Python 1.5.2 to run correctly. 1.5.2 is not multithreaded under the classic Mac OS and thus will not support Zope. (2.0 is multithreaded on the Mac, but doesn't work with Zope, though whether this is due only to the Python version or also includes other issues, I don't know). The speculation now is that OSX will be announced in February in proximity with MacWorld Tokyo and become available for purchase around that time. Apple has announced plans to ship OSX on new machines beginning in the summer. As usual, though, it wouldn't be much of a surprise if the dates slipped. There are ongoing issues around the OSX interface. However, it appears that Apple intends to minimize the overlap period between the classic Mac OS and OSX. I'd guess it will be the default OS by the end of 2001, but there will remain a substantial installed base of the classic system for some time. OSX is basically BSD unix with a proprietary presentation layer on top. Disks can be formatted with either a typical unixish case-sensitive file sysem or the Mac HFS+ extended file system, which is case insensitive. Most Mac users would probably choose the latter, which can cause problems with module and directory names when case sensitivity is assumed. I believe this problem affects building both Python and Zope. In addition, some of the standard file paths are different in OSX (e.g., to the java VM) and require a little investigating and editing to get things to work right. I've also heard that the gnu c compiler is named 'cc' rather than 'gcc' and that this can be a problem in some installs. Many things install correctly with no trouble, but it's not unusual to have to tweak a bit. Ultimately these issues will become generally known and things will be less of a guessing game than than are now. Tony Lownds has compiled Python 2.0 for Mac OSX <http://tony.lownds.com/macosx/>, which installs fine. I haven't found a source for a compiled 1.5.2. I've tried to follow Steve's directions for the 1.5.2 build at <http://www.zope.org/Members/sspickle/MacOSXBHFS> but I haven't been successful with that as yet. I also tried Zope with Python 2 (above) but wasn't able to get it to build correctly. Incidentally (in response to a previous comment), a compiled binary of MySQL (3.23.27) for MacOSX/Darwin is available at <http://www.mysql.com/downloads/mysql-3.23.html> under "Older and contributed versions." As an aside, OSX has pretty good Java support (JVM 1.2.2) and both JPython <www.jpython.org> and Jython <jython.sourceforge.net> compile and run fine (you must install jython with the '-unix' option because it doesn't recognize MacOSX). I've been experimenting with servlet containers (Tomcat, jakarta.apache.org) with the idea of writing servlets in Jython (example code for these is available). I've also played around with Enhydra <www.enhydra.org> and that also runs fine on OSX. jhh.cbmi.upmc.edu is a MacOSX machine running Tomcat and Jython which will hopefully have some Jython demo servlets up sometime next week. This machine will also get a Zope installation as soon as the OSX issues are worked out. Jim Harrison Univ. of Pittsburgh