[TriZPUG] managing python versions as well as package versions, or "up-to-speed for the ecosystem"

[Tom Roche]

summary: I'm having a particular problem involving docutils, python,
ubuntu, and sloth; I'd most appreciate help with that problem. However
my inability to solve my problem seems due to ignorance as well as
sloth, so I'd appreciate pointers to doc regarding python package/
project/version management best practices more generally, and preferably
targeting folks who've coded a lot outside python and its ecosystem but
not so much inside/with.

details:

I'm currently running

$ lsb_release -ds
> Ubuntu 10.04.3 LTS

way downlevel I know, and I should be upgrading Sometime Next Week
(famous last words :-) but at least it's up-to-date

$ uname -rv
> 2.6.32-33-generic #71-Ubuntu SMP Wed Jul 20 17:27:30 UTC 2011

except that

$ python --version
> Python 2.6.5

I'm trying to fix a doc problem on a site that uses yatiblog, but

$ pip install yatiblog
...
> VersionConflict: (docutils 0.6 (/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.6), Requirement.parse('docutils>=0.7'))

which I take to mean that "yatiblog requires docutils>=0.7, and
docutils>=0.7 requires python>2.6" (esp since I get the same dopeslap
from

$ pip install 'docutils>=0.7'
...
> VersionConflict: (docutils 0.6 (/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.6), Requirement.parse('docutils>=0.7'))

). Is that correct? If so, then (transitively), to get yatiblog I need
to get python>=2.7. So I'm wondering

1 What's the easiest or best way to globally install a more-uplevel
  python on a given release of ubuntu, without hosing the global/
  official/default/downlevel python, much less my debian/ubuntu/aptitude
  packages and their managers?

2 Instead of doing global installs, I'd like to do (though I haven't
  needed to, yet) isolated installs. But my impression is that (e.g.)
  visualenv won't help with python-version problems, only
  python-package-version problems. Am I missing something? If not,
  should I use pythonbrew? or similar?

3 Periodically trizpug has threads on "getting started with python," but
  they tend to be like "learning programming with python." I'd
  appreciate pointers to doc more about the "python ecosystem"
  (particularly, ... wait for it ... python-version and
  python-package-version management :-) targeting folks who've grown up
  programming elsewhere. FWIW I've scanned through

http://trizpug.org/up-to-speed/

  and am not seeing anything like that, but ...

I Could Be Missing Something, Tom Roche <Tom_Roche at pobox.com>