Building python on macOS fails with default config

[Basster]

I don't know whether you're planning supporting macOS or not, but I've tested it and found this issue:

In order for spin or better csspin-python to build the desired Python version on macOS, you must set the $SPIN_DATA variable to a folder without spaces, otherwise the c compiler will not be able to find the files.

On macOS, $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is located in ~/Library/Application Support/ (with spaces) which fails the python build:

Extract:

clang: error: no such file or directory: 'Support/spin/python/3.11.9/include'
clang: error: no such file or directory: 'Support/spin/python/3.11.9/lib'
clang: error: no such file or directory: 'Support/spin/python/3.11.9/lib'
clang: error: no such file or directory: 'Support/spin/python/3.11.9/lib'
clang: error: no such file or directory: 'Support/spin/python/3.11.9/lib'

I have created the following variables for spin in my shell:

export SPIN_CONFIG=~/.spin
export SPIN_DATA=~/.spin/data

This allows spin provision to run successfully.

TBH that's not a real bug in the code, but the docs may need a hint for macOS users.

[btschwertfeger]

Hey @Basster, csspin and its plugin packages are currently under experimental support for macOS but we will take this seriously and address it in Q1 2026.

[fpatz]

A patch for this has been created upstream and will land here soon.