Safest upgrade path?

[Gerhard Häring]

Robert Oschler wrote:
> I'm running Python on a SuSE 7.3 Pro Linux box and I want to upgrade to the
> latest Python version.  My concern is, if I just untar the latest goods and
> alter the startup script and env variables, that I'll somehow muck things up
> for RPM database or some other hidden consequence.  What's the best/safest
> way to upgrade?
 
I'd recommend to compile Python yourself to install it in /usr/local. Then
compile and install all the third-party packages you need with your Python
in /usr/local/bin. In a word: don't use RPM for Python stuff.

Alternatively, you can use the Python RPMs available at python.org from
jafo.  This is what I did when I was a SuSE user. I tweaked them a bit,
though - IIRC the main thing was that the expat package had a different
name on SuSE than it did on Redhat.

If you go this route, you can still (with a little luck) use RPMs for your
favourite Python extension modules. OTOH you will have conflicts with the
Python-related RPMs from SuSE. But these mostly suck, anyway, IMNSHO. [1]

I used to change all .SPEC files of SuSE RPMs where needed and recompiled
them.

Gerhard

[1] For example, they've packaged PyGreSQL two times, once as PyGreSQL
package, but in version from stone age (1999 or so), one more time as a
postgresql-python package.