Python on AIX: What are my options?

Question

I need to make some Python applications for a working project. The target platform is AIX 5.3.

My question is: which version of Python should I use?

My requirements:

• The Python version should be easily installed on the target computers. Others will do this in accordance with the instructions that I am writing, so they will not compile from the source or something like that.

• The Python version must have ncurses or curses support (I'm doing a form handler).

I found two different pre-compiled versions of Python for AIX, but one (2.1.something) did not include the curses module, and the other (2.3.4, RPM format) had prerequisites that I could not fulfill).

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

I myself compiled it from the source and tell you where to download it from the instructions

Answer 2

Use the AS Python 2.6.3.7 package from Activestate. They have a binary package for AIX on their download site .

If you don’t have an AIX machine to test it, the installation works the same way on Solaris or Linux, so you can write your documentation based on this. Basically, you unpack the tarball archive, use tar to unpack the archive, change the directory to the unpacked folder, run the shell script to install it, tell the shell script which directory to put it on and wait.

Usually this will be used to install into the user directory without superuser permission, but you can install it anywhere you want. You may also need to modify the system profile to make sure that all users can find the Python binary.

I suggest the latest Python 2.6 because it has many fixes and now there is a critical mass of third-party libraries ported to it. In addition, the standard library includes many useful materials that you had to collect separately. Curses is in the Python 2.6 standard library.

Be sure to avoid Python 3.1, as it is not mature enough and offers several advantages for most business applications.

Answer 3

We used ActiveState Python, as well as Pware's compiled version. Both worked well. For AS, we used 2.5 and 2.6. For Pware, only 2.6. Both 2.5 and 2.6 from AS support curses on our machine.

I compiled the source code, but as a rule, I have problems with ctypes or SSL. I currently have the Frankenstein option for AS Python2.6, but I pulled a couple of * .so files from Pware. I use GCC since we never thought about the compiler, but depending on what you need from Python, this is definitely doable if I can do this.

I mentioned that AS Python claims to be 100% compatible with standard Python, and that was for everything that we have done so far (mainly web applications).