[Chicago] Question re virtualenv and production environments

[D Mahoney]

Greetings, all. I've been using Python for admin scripts and the 
occasional cgi for several years now. In that time I've read about 
virtualenv and played with it briefly, but haven't really explored it 
very deeply.

I just started a new contract gig downtown, and I find myself working on 
a RedHat box with python 2.4 installed (2.4.3). Some of the tasks I'm 
working on would be simplified a bit if I could use a more up-to-date 
version, like maybe 2.7. I'm about ready in install virtualenv on this 
box for my development tasks, but my question is this: once I get my 
code working and ready for production use, would it be an especially bad 
idea to leave it in virtualenv? The machine in question is important 
enough that I'm really leery of taking a chance of screwing up Python by 
installing a more current python incorrectly.

Thoughts?