On 2 Feb, 03:46, Paul Rubin <http://[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I'd say the functionality that John wants is the same that pretty much > everyone wants, and it's much easier to get for other languages than > for Python.
If the hosting provider doesn't want to install MySQLdb then it may not be a technical issue - perhaps they just can't be bothered to install it, possibly because there's no demand or benefit to the bottom line in doing so. That said, I think that a large part of the community does no-one any favours by "fashionably" requiring the most cutting edge software, insisting on Python 2.5 in some cases, in order for their stuff to work. Then again, getting stuff to work across several versions (and combinations of several versions of several packages) is an issue of release engineering, and it's no coincidence that companies have made good business out of this kind of thing. Perhaps Python needs a "backports" project where newer software is backported to older Python releases. Alternatively, given the increasing prominence of virtual server hosting, people might be advised to consider one of those hosting plans: the benefits of being able to install almost anything, often with modern operating system distributions whose packages are updated, surely outweigh the administrative demands and price differences in at least some situations. Paul -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list