Installing Python 2.4 on Linux

[David Fraser]

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.

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

Hope that helps
David