Python 2.6 worth the hassle?

[Christian Heimes]

Evan Kroske schrieb:
> I'm planning on learning Python, and I'd like to know which version to
> start with. I know that Python 3.0 isn't ready for production and it
> doesn't have enough libraries yet, so I thought I should learn Python
> 2.6. Unfortunately, installing Python 2.6 on my Linux distro (Ubuntu
> Intrepid Ibex) has given me lots of complicated problems I really don't
> want to deal with.

It's rather easy to install Python 2.6 on Ubuntu 8.10 if you know how to
do it right:

# get all dependencies and necessary header files
sudo apt-get build-dep python2.5

# download and extract it
curl http://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.6.2/Python-2.6.2.tgz | tar -xzv

# Python is compiled with UCS 4 on all Debian systems
cd Python-2.6.2
./configure --enable-unicode=ucs4 --prefix=/usr/local

# compile it
make

# use altinstall so you don't overwrite the python command
# and just install the python2.6 command
sudo make altinstall

Now you have Python 2.6.2 in /usr/local

In order to remove it complete follow the instructions of my blog:
http://lipyrary.blogspot.com/2009/04/ubuntu-904-jaunty-and-python.html

Christian