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List:       python-list
Subject:    Re: Installing Python 2.4 on Linux
From:       David Fraser <davidf () sjsoft ! com>
Date:       2005-04-06 18:59:11
Message-ID: d31anp$16t$1 () ctb-nnrp2 ! saix ! net
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Edward Diener wrote:
> I can install Python 2.4 on the Fedora 3 Linux system, but after I do a 
> number of Linux utilities and commands, like yum, stop working because 
> they were dependent on the Python 2.3 installation. What happens is that 
> Python 2.4 replaces the /usr/bin/python module with the Python 2.4 
> version. If I replace /usr/bin/python with the Python 2.3 version 
> executable, which is still on my system, that all the aforesaid modules 
> depend on, they start working again, but I can no longer execute 
> modules, like IDLE, which was part of my Python 2.4 distribution.
> 
> What is the solution to this ? The operating system was installed with 
> Python 2.3 and the development libraries but no tools, doc, or 
> otherwise. I have installed Python 2.4 with all the RPMs and copied down 
> the Python 2.4 documentation to my machine ( since python24-docs.rpm 
> gives one very little ). I would naturally like to use Python 2.4 
> without killing all the commands that depend on Python 2.3. No doubt 
> these commands have their modules in the site libraries for Python 2.3. 
> Of course I would love to update these dependencies to use Python 2.4 
> but newer RPMs for these commands do not exist.
> 
> I do not know whether this is a Python problem or a Fedora 3 problem but 
> I thought I would ask here first and see if anybody else had the same 
> problem. I imagine the problem might exist on other Linux systems.

Actually the Fedora RPMS supplied on the Python website are fine:
http://www.python.org/2.4.1/rpms.html
Quoting from that page:
> # Q) Is it safe to install these RPMs on a Red Hat system? Will they over-write the \
> system python and cause problems with other Red Hat applications that expect a \
> different version of Python? # A) The RPMs that start with "python2.4" are built to \
> not interfere with the system Python. They install as "/usr/bin/python2.4" and will \
> not conflict with the system Python unless you are running on a system that ships \
> the a version of Python which has the same major/minor number. 
> To invoke the interpreter with these packages, you will explicitly have to run \
> "python2.4". Note that all Python RPMs provided by Python.org and Red Hat provide a \
> "/usr/bin/python2.4" (or similar, with major/minor number), even if they also \
> provide "/usr/bin/python". So, yes, it should be safe. 
> Note that you may need to build and install a second copy of any packages which you \
> need access to with the supplemental version of Python. You can build packages of \
> these files for the Python 2.4 interpreters for packages which use Distutils, by \
> using the command "python2.4 setup.py bdist_rpm". 

This is by far the preferred way to install a different version of 
Python to the default version provided with a distribution, as you don't 
then conflict with packages that require the default version.

Also, it is better to do it like this using real packages than to rename 
files manually. I have used the above successfully on Fedora Core 3 (and 
other similar versions on other distro versions), if it doesn't work for 
you there is a source RPM available to rebuild from

Hope that helps
David
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