Installing Python 2.4 on Linux

[Edward Diener]

David Fraser wrote:
> Edward Diener wrote:
> 
>> I can install Python 2.4 on the Fedora 3 Linux system, but after I do 
>> a number of Linux utilities and commands, like yum, stop working 
>> because they were dependent on the Python 2.3 installation. What 
>> happens is that Python 2.4 replaces the /usr/bin/python module with 
>> the Python 2.4 version. If I replace /usr/bin/python with the Python 
>> 2.3 version executable, which is still on my system, that all the 
>> aforesaid modules depend on, they start working again, but I can no 
>> longer execute modules, like IDLE, which was part of my Python 2.4 
>> distribution.
>>
>> What is the solution to this ? The operating system was installed with 
>> Python 2.3 and the development libraries but no tools, doc, or 
>> otherwise. I have installed Python 2.4 with all the RPMs and copied 
>> down the Python 2.4 documentation to my machine ( since 
>> python24-docs.rpm gives one very little ). I would naturally like to 
>> use Python 2.4 without killing all the commands that depend on Python 
>> 2.3. No doubt these commands have their modules in the site libraries 
>> for Python 2.3. Of course I would love to update these dependencies to 
>> use Python 2.4 but newer RPMs for these commands do not exist.
>>
>> I do not know whether this is a Python problem or a Fedora 3 problem 
>> but I thought I would ask here first and see if anybody else had the 
>> same problem. I imagine the problem might exist on other Linux systems.
> 
> 
> Actually the Fedora RPMS supplied on the Python website are fine:
> http://www.python.org/2.4.1/rpms.html
> Quoting from that page:
> 
>> # Q) Is it safe to install these RPMs on a Red Hat system? Will they 
>> over-write the system python and cause problems with other Red Hat 
>> applications that expect a different version of Python?
>> # A) The RPMs that start with "python2.4" are built to not interfere 
>> with the system Python. They install as "/usr/bin/python2.4" and will 
>> not conflict with the system Python unless you are running on a system 
>> that ships the a version of Python which has the same major/minor number.
>>
>> To invoke the interpreter with these packages, you will explicitly 
>> have to run "python2.4". Note that all Python RPMs provided by 
>> Python.org and Red Hat provide a "/usr/bin/python2.4" (or similar, 
>> with major/minor number), even if they also provide "/usr/bin/python". 
>> So, yes, it should be safe.
>>
>> Note that you may need to build and install a second copy of any 
>> packages which you need access to with the supplemental version of 
>> Python. You can build packages of these files for the Python 2.4 
>> interpreters for packages which use Distutils, by using the command 
>> "python2.4 setup.py bdist_rpm". 
> 
> 
> This is by far the preferred way to install a different version of 
> Python to the default version provided with a distribution, as you don't 
> then conflict with packages that require the default version.

I do have a separate package installed for Python2.4 and it coexists 
with Python2.3. The real problem is that a great number of other 
packages, which are initially part of the system, depend on Python2.3 so 
I must leave /usr/bin/python as Python2.3. I do not know of a way to 
reinstall these other packages to use Python2.4 instead. Does the line 
above, "python2.4 setup.py bdist_rpm" mean that I am supposed to run 
this against each of these other package's rpm files and substitute for 
"bdist_rpm" the name of the rpm file ?

> 
> Also, it is better to do it like this using real packages than to rename 
> files manually. I have used the above successfully on Fedora Core 3 (and 
> other similar versions on other distro versions), if it doesn't work for 
> you there is a source RPM available to rebuild from

Is "bdist_rpm" the source rpm for these packages which currently depend 
on Python2.3 ?

Further help getting my Fedora 3 packages which depend on Python2.3 to 
use Python2.4 would be appreciated.