Re: Lilypond code/feature freeze for 2.12

[John Mandereau]

On 2008/09/22, Matthias Neeracher wrote:
> From: "Trevor Daniels" <address@hidden>
> > Do we -really- want to issue a new stable release
> > containing masses of syntax changes with a broken
> > convert-ly for many Mac users?
> 
> The MacOS Python pages <http://www.python.org/download/mac/> actually
> have fairly detailed download instructions and binary installers, so
> as long as the link is included in the documentation, it doesn't seem
> unreasonable to expect users to install this manually.

This is a tempting solution, as making convert-ly work with Python 2.3
again will take 1 hour of precious time and we won't do this for
lilypond-book anyway.


> In VocalEasel, I have some code which tests for the presence of python
> 2.4 and if not found shows an alert taking the user to the download
> page; I'd be happy to donate this to lilypond, but it's written in
> Objective C++ and thus not directly suitable for inclusion.

Thanks, but we can check Python version from Python scripts themselves,
before importing the problematic modules:

if sys.hexversion < 0x02040000:
        error ("Python 2.4 or newer is required.\n\nIf your operating system is
Mac OS X, please install Python from
http://www.python.org/download/mac/.";)

Shall I go ahead with this (in lilypond-book and convert-ly)?  We
provide Python with all other binaries, so I think this error message is
enough.

Cheers,
John