The solution is found on the download page, basically you get the python2.4 rpm and install it alongside your existing python, and run your in-house scripts with /usr/bin/env python2.4:This question applies specifically to RHEL 3.0 (actually Whitebox), but also generally to Redhat and probably pretty much every distribution that uses python for distribution-related tasks (configuration managers, rpm package management, yum, etc).
So I want to upgrade to python 2.4 on Whitebox 3.0. Ideally I would like python to live in /usr/bin and replace the python 2.2 that ships with RHEL entirely. This gets pretty infeasable when you consider how many packages depend on python 2.2:
cd /usr/lib/python2.2/site-packages rpm -qf * | sort | uniq alchemist-1.0.27-1 authconfig-4.3.7-1 ethereal-0.10.3-0.30E.1 file Ft is not owned by any package file _xmlplus is not owned by any package kudzu-1.1.22.2-1 libuser-0.51.7-1 libxml2-python-2.5.10-6 mod_python-3.0.3-3.ent newt-0.51.5-1 parted-1.6.3-29 pygtk2-1.99.16-8 pyOpenSSL-0.5.1-8 pyorbit-1.99.3-5 python-2.2.3-5 python-optik-1.4.1-2 pyxf86config-0.3.5-1 redhat-config-printer-gui-0.6.47.3.19-1 rhnlib-1.5-1.1.WB1 rhpl-0.110.4-1 rpm-python-4.2.2-0.14.WB1 up2date-4.3.19-1.WB1
As best I can tell, I have 2 options:
1) Install python 2.4 from source over /usr/bin/python. Rebuild *all* of the packages listed above from srpms and reinstall them.
2) Give up and install python 2.4 in /usr/local. This leaves me in the awkward situation of having to ensure that all our in-house scripts, all the time use /usr/local/bin/python.
I don't suppose there is a simple, rpm package based approach to fixing this?
# Q) Is it safe to install these RPMs on a Red Hat system? Will they over-write the system python and cause problems with other Red Hat applications that expect a different version of Python?
# A) The RPMs that start with "python2.4" are built to not interfere with the system Python. They install as "/usr/bin/python2.4" and will not conflict with the system Python unless you are running on a system that ships the a version of Python which has the same major/minor number.
To invoke the interpreter with these packages, you will explicitly have to run "python2.4". Note that all Python RPMs provided by Python.org and Red Hat provide a "/usr/bin/python2.4" (or similar, with major/minor number), even if they also provide "/usr/bin/python". So, yes, it should be safe.
Note that you may need to build and install a second copy of any packages which you need access to with the supplemental version of Python. You can build packages of these files for the Python 2.4 interpreters for packages which use Distutils, by using the command "python2.4 setup.py bdist_rpm".
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