Laura Creighton wrote: > DO NOT REBUILD PYTHON ON CENTOS! > > It can break the whole package management system > which depends on having a particular version of python installed. > > If you are running Centos you need to use virtualenv to be safe. > > Laura
Almost right! You can install Python from source. Unzip the source tar ball, cd into the source directory, and run: ./configure make BUT do *not* run `make install` as that will overwrite your system Python and Bad Things will happen. Instead, run `make altinstall`. Now you will have two Python installs, the stock-standard system Python is available as "python", and the newly-installed one as "pythonX.Y" (for version X.Y). What I do is then add alias python /usr/local/bin/pythonX.Y to my .bashrc file, and use the new one. (Don't forget to change the X.Y to whatever version you actually used.) What if you accidentally blow away the system Python by running `make install`? You probably won't be able to use yum to fix it, since yum relies on the system Python. Fortunately, you haven't actually *removed* the system Python, it's still there just hiding. First, find out which version of Python your system Python is: [steve@ando ~]$ ls -l /usr/bin/python* -rwxr-xr-x 2 root root 5708 Jan 9 2013 /usr/bin/python lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 6 Jan 22 2013 /usr/bin/python2 -> python -rwxr-xr-x 2 root root 5708 Jan 9 2013 /usr/bin/python2.4 This tells me that the system Python is 2.4 (well actually I already knew that). /usr/bin/python here is a hard-link to the python2.4 executable. If I had accidentally killed the system Python, I would see something like: -rwxr-xr-x 2 root root 6789 Feb 24 2015 /usr/bin/python lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 6 Jan 22 2013 /usr/bin/python2 -> python -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 5708 Jan 9 2013 /usr/bin/python2.4 -rwxr-xr-x 2 root root 6789 Feb 24 2015 /usr/bin/python2.7 The /usr/bin/python is now hard-linked to the newly installed version. As root: rm /usr/bin/python # Die, imposter! ln /usr/bin/python2.4 /usr/bin/python # Revive the system Python. All fixed! -- Steven -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
