Martijn Faassen: The Call of Python 2.8

[Chris Angelico]

On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 12:40 AM, Marko Rauhamaa <marko at pacujo.net> wrote:
> Chris Angelico <rosuav at gmail.com>:
>
>> So get Python 3.3 for your system, then.
>
> That'll have to wait till it's time for an OS overhaul. I don't do those
> every year.

What OS? Since getting 3.3 isn't just a matter of "grab the .msi/.dmg
file from python.org", I'm guessing it's neither Windows nor OS X, so
I'd guess you're most likely talking about Linux. On Linux, it's
pretty easy to build Python from source. Debian Wheezy ships Python
3.2, so with that distro you should be able to do this:

# apt-get build-dep python3

and it'll install everything you need to build Python 3.2 (and 3.3
needs the same packages). Then you just grab the source code and do
the classic configure and make.

Or if you don't want to build from source, you could get a package of
3.3 from somewhere. In the case of Debian, that would mean grabbing
the Python package from Jessie:

https://packages.debian.org/jessie/python3.3

I haven't tested, but that package will most likely install happily on
a Debian Wheezy. Chances are you can find an equivalent for other
Linuxes (I don't have much experience with rpm-based distros, but I'm
sure there's some equivalent of "apt-get build-dep"). For non-Linux
systems, I don't know how hard it is to get a newer Python, but it
seems highly unlikely that you're forced to wait for an OS upgrade.

Remember, there's nothing wrong with having lots of versions of Python
installed. The package manager might provide a couple (maybe 3.1 and
3.2), but having 3.3 installed won't break scripts that depend on 3.2
being there, unless you actually switch over what 'python3' does - and
even that's unlikely to break much, since most Linux distros are going
to be depending more on the 2.x version than the 3.x... and those that
depend on 3.x are sufficiently forward-looking to be shipping 3.3 or
even 3.4, so the point is moot.

ChrisA