Lately, I have been poking around to group a list of resources for those that wants to code using python, but for their sake have decided to buy a mac. I have to admit that I did this many times already, but this was the first time during an operating system change (10.3 -> 10.4).

What I have understood can be summarized as follows:

1. there is a huge mess of distributions for python for mac; Usually the OSX system comes with an already-out-dated version of python. For instance the 10.4 comes with the python 2.3.5 while there is already the 2.4.1. Developers around the globe offer their replacement package for the official version: [1]. [2].

2. If you look for an IDE there are only a few possibilities: [1] (commercial); and [2] which requires the PyObjC, which is stuck at OSX 10.3.

3. An alternative may be to use Eclipse with a specific plugin.

4. The official page of pythonmac.org contains a list of packages that are ported to the OSX platform and that allows to integrate more deeply some coding functionalities. Additionally using PyObjC is possible to package a script in a standalone cocoa application.

5. Rui Carmo maintain also a good resource page with pointers, as for the integration with Tiger, the only good pointer I found is here. Too many hacks though, so I will stay with the official distribution for now and try to make things simple as far as I can.