Allow Python executable location and Python home to be specified.
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Key: MODPYTHON-225
URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/MODPYTHON-225
Project: mod_python
Issue Type: New Feature
Components: core
Affects Versions: 3.3.1
Reporter: Graham Dumpleton
Where a user has multiple versions of Python installed getting mod_python to
work can be problematic.
The main issue is where a version of Python is installed in a location
different to where the standard operating system version is installed. For
example, if /usr/bin/python is Python version 2.4 and a user has installed
Python version 2.5 as /usr/local/bin/python. And the user has compiled
mod_python against Python 2.5 and not the operating system version 2.4.
Under normal circumstances Apache is only going to look in /usr/bin when
started from an init.d script and not in /usr/local/bin. The result of this is
that Python when initialised will find /usr/bin/python and assume that that is
the base it should use to start with to find where the Python library files are
installed. In doing this though it will not be able to find /usr/lib/python2.5
as what it really needs to be able to find is /usr/local/lib/python2.5. The
final outcome will be that mod_python will not be able to find the Python code
files for itself when starting up.
The only way around this is to set the PATH environment variable in the startup
scripts for Apache to look in /usr/local/bin before /usr/bin. Alternatively, on
some UNIX platforms (but not necessarily all) it is possible to set the
environment variable PYTHONEXECUTABLE to be the exact location of the python
executable specified when configuring mod_python. Finally, on UNIX platforms
one can also set PYTHONHOME to be the exact location of either a shared
platform independent/dependent Python library directory, or where separate
directories a colon separated list of the two directories. In the latter Python
will skip the whole search process and simply use the two values.
Having to use environment variables to do this can be a pain as it may be
necessary to modify init.d startup scripts to make it work. What should really
be done is that mod_python should provide for UNIX platforms the directives
PythonExecutable and PythonHome as equivalents to using the PYTHONEXECUTABLE
and PYTHONHOME environment variables. These values if defined can be used in
calls to Py_SetProgramName() and Py_SetPythonHome() appropriately.
This will allow the Apache configuration file itself to be used to qualify
which version of Python should be used when non standard versions not in the
standard locations are being used.
Note that these directives shouldn't be required on the Windows platform as it
uses the Windows registry to find where the Python library files are located.
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