Safest upgrade path?

[Skip Montanaro]

    Robert> I'm running Python on a SuSE 7.3 Pro Linux box and I want to
    Robert> upgrade to the latest Python version.  My concern is, if I just
    Robert> untar the latest goods and alter the startup script and env
    Robert> variables, that I'll somehow muck things up for RPM database or
    Robert> some other hidden consequence.  What's the best/safest way to
    Robert> upgrade?

You can grab Sean Reifschneider's source rpm and build that into an
installable binary.  In correspondence with Sean the other day, he said it's
this simple:

    You're always better off building an RPM specificly for your system.
    Pick up the .src.rpm, run "rpm --rebuild python2-2.1.1-1.src.rpm".
    Towards the end of the build process you should see a bunch of lines
    saying "Wrote:", this is where the binary RPMs were written.  You can
    then install them, knowing that they're built for the libraries that are
    on your system.

    I almost always use .src.rpms, even if there are binary RPMs claiming to
    be for my system...

I haven't gotten around to try proving it's as easy as Sean suggests yet.
Perhaps you can try it and get back to me. ;-)

Oh, yes...  Sean's latest rpms are at

    http://www.python.org/2.2.1/rpms.html

-- 
Skip Montanaro
skip at pobox.com
consulting: http://manatee.mojam.com/~skip/resume.html