[Tutor] what is the easiest way to install different Python versions?

[Albert-Jan Roskam]

Hi,

(sorry for cross-posting, sort of)

A few days ago I needed to check whether some Python code ran with Python 2.6. What is the easiest way to install another Python version along side the default Python version? My own computer is Debian Linux 64 bit, but a platform-independent solution would be best.

Possible solutions that I am aware of

-make altinstall *). This is what I tried (see below), but not all modules could be built. I gave up because I was in a hurry
-Pythonbrew. This project is dead
-Deadsnakes
-Anaconda
-Tox? I only know this is as a cross-version/implementation test runner
-Vagrant. This is what I eventually did, and this was very simple. I ran Ubuntu 10.0.4 LTS, which uses Python 2.6, and used Vagrant SSH to run and check my code in Python 2.6 (and I replaced a dict comprehension with a list comprehension, for example)
- ...

What is the recommended way? I don't expect/hope that I'd ever need something lower than Python 2.5



Thank you.

Albert-Jan




*) Make altinstall
sudo apt-get install libsqlite3-dev libbz2-dev libgdbm-dev libncurses5-dev tk-dev zlib1g-dev
wget https://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.6.8/Python-2.6.8.tgz
tar -zxvf Python-2.6.8.tgz
cd Python-2.6.8/
./configure --prefix=/usr/local
make  # see 'failed stuff' below
sudo make altinstall 
mkvirtualenv -p /usr/local/bin/python2.6 python26  # ImportError: No module named zlib


# Failed stuff
Failed to find the necessary bits to build these modules:
_bsddb            _curses            _curses_panel
_hashlib          _sqlite3          _ssl
bsddb185          bz2                dbm
dl                gdbm              imageop
linuxaudiodev      ossaudiodev        readline
sunaudiodev        zlib 
 



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