Installing Python on CentOS 6 - a big pain

[Chris Angelico]

On Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 3:36 PM, Steven D'Aprano
<steve+comp.lang.python at pearwood.info> wrote:
> With all the tools installed, it's a matter of a few minutes effort to
> build from scratch:
>
> run ./configure
> run make
> run sudo make altinstall
>
> As a total n00b who'd never used make before, it took me 25 minutes
> effort on my first attempt, including reading the entire README file
> (twice!). Now I have the whole process down to about 30 seconds effort,
> and six minutes elapsed time, on my laptop.

The first time I built a Python 3, I didn't know about 'make
altinstall', and managed to make something of a mess of my system (the
default Python is 2.6.6 on Ubuntu, IIRC, and there are system scripts
that don't work on Py3). But now, it's pretty easy, as yesterday can
attest: I did a fresh install of Debian, starting at about 11AM, and
by mid-afternoon everything was built and deployed. Most of that time
was spent cloning about 8-10 source repositories (including one local
one of "work stuff") and building stuff from source, and not one of
the programs gave me any trouble. Python 3 was among them.

Now, granted, this was Debian and I can't speak for Centos. But it
would surprise me greatly if your package manager can't provide build
essentials.

ChrisA