Python vs. Fedora and CentOS

Tue Jun 1 13:23:22 EDT 2010

On Tue, 2010-06-01 at 10:43 -0600, Michael Torrie wrote:
> On 05/31/2010 05:13 AM, Jason D wrote:
> > There is however never been an issue to locate different version of python 
> > in your system as you deem fit without problems. 
> > So I dont understand why your concern.
> 
> Actually, replacing python on RHEL is a major endeavor.

Then don't do it.  Just install Python 2.6.  Who cares what version of
Python the system utilities use?

>   Almost all Red
> Hat utilities are written in python and depend on the specific system
> version of python that they shipped.  Thus if you want to upgrade python
> you're going to break 80% of the system.
> 
> Sure you can install Python from source alongside the system python, but
> that's a maintenance nightmare for system administrators.

No, it is not.  It is trivial.  The packages don't overlap at all.

You run python2.6, easy_install-2.6, etc... and the app merrily runs.

>   I administer
> some 30 RHEL instances, and compiling from source just isn't a good
> option here.  As for third-party RPMs, that's all fine and well as long
> as you don't need any support from Red Hat.  RH can only support
> software they ship and certify.

In my experience RedHat supports their system - *not* the software you
run on it.  So they don't care either way.

>   As for me, I don't need RH to support
> my custom RPMs, so I think that's probably a fair compromise.  It would
> be nice to have a source (that's kept up to date security-wise) of
> python packages that can be installed alongside RH system ones.  Maybe
> call it python26 or python28 or python31 and stick it in the EPEL
> repository.  I am supposing that if anyone wanted to do this, the EPEL
> folks would be happy to let that person be the package maintainer.

rpm -Uvh
http://dl.iuscommunity.org/pub/ius/stable/Redhat/5/i386/ius-release-1-4.ius.el5.noarch.rpm
yum -y install python26 python26-setuptools 

-- 
Adam Tauno Williams <awilliam at whitemice.org> LPIC-1, Novell CLA
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