Relocatable binary installs....

[Fredrik Lundh]

Steve Holden wrote:

>>>Is there a way to make a relocateable python binary... that is... a
>>>python installation that won't care where it is on the machine... and
>>>won't care if it gets put somewhere else besides /  ?
>>
>>
>> the standard CPython interpreter is 100% "relocatable".  If you think
>> it isn't, you have to be a bit more specific.
>>
> Is it possible that you are using "relocatable" in the standard sense of "code can be located 
> anywhere in physical memory", where the OP is using the same term to mean "can live anywhere in 
> the filestore"?

nope.

> I suspect the problem the OP is seeing is because the --prefix configuration parameter will cause 
> an interpreter to look in a specific place for standard libraries. Clearly if you "relocate" the 
> libraries to another directory entirely then an interpreter without any further nouse (and no 
> symbolic links to help it) is going to crap out badly.

clearly?

[fredrik at brain build] mv python2.3 /tmp
[fredrik at brain build] mkdir /tmp/lib
[fredrik at brain build] mv lib /tmp/lib/python2.3
[fredrik at brain build] cd /tmp
[fredrik at brain tmp]$ ./python2.3
>>> import sys
>>> sys.prefix
'/tmp'
>>> sys.path
['', '/tmp/lib/python23.zip', '/tmp/lib/python2.3', ...]
>>>
[fredrik at brain tmp]$ mkdir spam
[fredrik at brain tmp]$ mv python2.3 spam
[fredrik at brain tmp]$ mv lib spam
[fredrik at brain tmp]$ cd spam/
[fredrik at brain spam]$ ./python2.3
>>> import sys
>>> sys.prefix
'/tmp/spam'
>>> sys.path
['', '/tmp/spam/lib/python23.zip', '/tmp/spam/lib/python2.3', ...]
>>>

[fredrik at brain spam]$ mkdir bin
[fredrik at brain spam]$ mv python2.3 bin
[fredrik at brain spam]$ bin/python2.3
>>> import sys
>>> sys.prefix
'/tmp/spam'
>>>

[fredrik at brain spam]$ cd bin
[fredrik at brain bin]$ ./python2.3
>>> import sys
>>> sys.prefix
'/tmp/spam'

[fredrik at brain fredrik]$ export PATH=/tmp/spam/bin:$PATH
[fredrik at brain bin]$ cd
[fredrik at brain fredrik]$ python2.3
>>> import sys
>>> sys.prefix
'/tmp/spam'
>>>

and so on...

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