Has Red Hat helped or hurt?

[Tim Roberts]

Red Hat 7.x uses Python 1.52 for many of its configuration and
administration activities.  Ordinarily, I'd say this was a Good Thing for
the betterment and furtherance of Python.

However, it makes it deucedly difficult to upgrade away from 1.52.  If one
upgrades /usr/bin/python to be 2.x, all of Red Hat's custom configuration
scripts are no longer found in site-packages.

How have other people handled this?  Do you just copy all of
1.52/site-packages to 2.x/site-packages?  Do you install Python 2.x into a
separate directory and grumble every time you have to change the #! line in
your scripts?  I tried updating all of the #! lines in the Red Hat scripts,
but this, of course, blows as soon as you do an rpm upgrade of a
Python-based package.
--
- Tim Roberts, timr at probo.com
  Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.