Conversion to Python3 is a big issue, for Chirp and for many other projects. A main underlying problem is that CHIRP depends on underlying projects that have not converted. Nevertheless, The main CHIRP developer is in fact working on a conversion. In addition to the CHIRP core, there are also more than 100 separate driver modules to support different radios, and it all must be converted. The developers of Python in their infinite wisdom made changes that affect the semantics of many Python constructs, so all of that stuff needs to be checked, more or less by hand. The average driver is more that 500 lines of code, so there are more than 500,000 lines of code to be checked just in the drivers. Perhaps the biggest changes in Python affect the way strings are handled: Python 3 makes a distinction between text strings and byte strings that did not exist in Python 2. But guess what? serial I/O depends very heavily on the precise semantics of the manipulation of byte strings, and each driver has its own unique serial I/O code.  I am a very recent addition to the CHIRP development community, so the best I could do initially was to make sure that the driver that I wrote is compatible with both Python2 and Python 3.

On Mon, Mar 4, 2019 at 12:14 PM Wenlock Burton <wenlock.burton@hotmail.com> wrote:
Hi

Although I am not a Mac user I would support Mac users on this issue.

Wenlock
VK3YWB

Sent from my iPad

On 5 Mar 2019, at 4:21 AM, Mary Graff <megraff@gmail.com> wrote:

What does it take to convince folks there is an interest in maintaining usability for Mac users? I for one am very interested.

Regards,

Mary Graff
 
From: chirp_users-bounces@intrepid.danplanet.com on behalf of Leo Notenboom (N7LEO) <leo@n7leo.com>
Sent: Monday, March 4, 2019 9:12 AM
To: Discussion of CHIRP
Subject: Re: [chirp_users] New Python coming?
 
On Mon, Mar 4, 2019 at 9:04 AM Peter <ptlambert@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
Time to break out the Wine on OSX?

It may be overkill for some, but one thing I did when I was still using the OEM
software rather than Chirp was to run Windows in a virtual machine on my
MacBook. Depending on the VM software being used, there may be an additional
step or two to get the right interface cable to appear to Windows in the VM
rather than be captured natively on the Mac, but it worked well.

(Newbie to this list, but long time Chirp user now... both Mac & PC)

Leo A. Notenboom (N7LEO)
----------------

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