Maintaining Multiple Copies of Python (Linux)

[Nicholas Fitzkee]

On Wednesday, May 30, 2012 7:55:33 PM UTC-5, Ben Finney wrote:

> The consensus solution for this is ‘virtualenv’
> <URL:http://pypi.python.org/pypi/virtualenv>.
> 
> It is so popular as a solution for the kinds of problems you describe
> that its functionality will come into core Python, as discussed in PEP
> 405 <URL:http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0405/>, for Python 3.3.
> 
> Until you start using Python 3.3, you can install ‘virtualenv’ as a
> third-party package.

Thanks, Ben.

I took a look at this, and I'm a little confused.  First, it doesn't seem all that different from "./configure --prefix=ENV" with the exception that you save a little space re-using some libraries.  Second, it really doesn't solve my problem, because if ENV/bin/python is my PATH, it can still be confused with /usr/bin/python.  What am I missing?

Thanks again,
Nick