Python 2.5 incompatible with Fedora Core 6 - packaging problems again

[John Nagle]

Patrick Useldinger wrote:
> http://www.serpentine.com/blog/2006/12/22/how-to-build-safe-clean-python-25-rpms-for-fedora-core-6/

    I've read that.  It's very funny. "Now you’ll need to go into the SOURCES 
directory and frob a single file..."

    It does have something very useful in it - Python's
2.5's dependency list:

sudo yum install autoconf bzip2-devel db4-devel \
expat-devel findutils gcc-c++ gdbm-devel glibc-devel gmp-devel \
libGL-devel libX11-devel libtermcap-devel ncurses-devel \
openssl-devel pkgconfig readline-devel sqlite-devel tar \
tix-devel tk-devel zlib-devel

    If a Python build needs all that, something in ./configure
should be checking for each of those.  After all, that's what
./configure is supposed to be for.  It looks like a Python
install will plow ahead without ncurses-devel, and install a
dud version.

(Why is "make install" doing compiles, anyway?  It should
just be copying.  "make" is supposed to do all the
compiles.)

    This, though, illustrates exactly what I was talking about
  - there is no off the shelf way to install Python 2.5 on
Fedora Core 6.  Others have worked through this and documented
their pain and how to do it manually, but that's not the same
as fixing the packaging problem.

    Debian tries to deal with this problem.   See

http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/python-policy/index.html

But Fedora Core does not.

    Perl, PHP, C, C++, and Java don't have this particular
problem.  Python stands alone, out in the cold.

				John Nagle