Installation of multiple versions of Python on Unix

[Sean 'Shaleh' Perry]

On Friday 30 August 2002 22:35, John E. Barham wrote:
> Situation:  I want to run Zope 2.5.1 on my FreeBSD server.  I also want to
> run the latest version of Python (i.e., 2.2.1), but Zope only officially
> supports Python 2.1.x.
>
> Question:  Is it okay to install both versions of Python and have Zope run
> by Python 2.1.x but have the latest version of Python as the default from
> the shell?  Are there any stability implications to doing this?
>
> Apologies if has already been dealt with, but a quick check of the
> newsgroup archive didn't make it clear if this is feasible.
>
>     John

Debian actually has 1.5.2, 2.1.3, and 2.2.1 all packaged and you can install 
any one of them or all of them (I actually have all 3).  We solve it by 
having python1.5, python2.2 and the current default (called simply python) is 
2.1.  Each gets installed under /usr/lib/python-version.  Works like a charm.