Upgrading to 2.3 from 2.2, questions

[Jeff Shannon]

Peter Hansen wrote:

> Robert Oschler wrote:
>
>> - Do I need to uninstall 2.2 first?
>
>
> I don't know if there's an official answer other than "yes".  I don't
> know if there's a safe answer other than "yes".


I'm pretty sure that there should be no problems with having different 
versions of Python running side-by-side.  I have had 2.0 and 2.1 on the 
same machine, and 2.1 and 2.2, with no problems at all. 

>> - I am running on Windows 2000 and I have several site-packages 
>> installed.
>> These were installed using individual one-click installation programs 
>> (thank
>> you module writers).  Do I need to rerun each of the installations 
>> again,
>> after I upgrade?  Or, is there a directory or two I can simply copy 
>> over?
>
>
> While it might work, it's not guaranteed.  Extensions need to
> be compiled for the specific version, while pure Python packages
> will generally run as-is if you just copy them (generally they
> are all in python/lib/site-packages).  No guarantees again.


As Peter says, any packages that contain C extension (.pyd) modules need 
to be compiled for the specific version of Python.  You will need to 
download new versions of those packages.  Packages that are pure Python 
*should* run just as well under the new version as the old version, 
providing that it doesn't trip over any of the possible 
backwards-compatibility issues (such problems are moderately unusual) -- 
however, if you copy from site-packages to site-packages, be sure to 
delete any .pyc files because those are probably *not* 
version-portable.  You're probably better off re-running the installer, 
if it's still available.  (Also, odds are good that there's a new 
version of those packages, and while you're upgrading Python is a good 
time to upgrade other things too, so you may want to go ahead and 
re-download those packages as well.)

Jeff Shannon
Technician/Programmer
Credit International