I recently installed python 2.4, and many installed software packages stopped working. Some things got working after I copied some files and directories from /usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages to /usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages, but I also had to install a newer PyXml package, as some of the files that came with python2.4 required a newer version of pyxml than I had in python2.3/site-packages.
I wonder if there is any particular reason I have no /usr/lib/site-python directory, and everything is installed in version-specific site-packages. I have Fedora Core 3. Is it the Fedora packagers who prefer installing everything in the version-specific directory? Is there no way to have older packages continue working in the presence of python2.4? (I still want the newest to be the default!) I have tried (cd /usr/bin; grep '#!.*python' * 2>/dev/null), and very few of the programs have a specific version in the interpreter line. Is there any good reason this is so? Thinking about it, a particular python program may require a particular module, but not any particular version of python or the module. The module perhaps requires at least python2.3, but could run just as well with python2.4 or later. It does not make sense to have the program demand a particular version of python in its interpreter string (e.g., "#!/usr/bin/python2.3"), but what about the module. Would it be better to put the module in site-python and include code to check the interpreter version? Perhaps there is no perfect solution that covers all permutations, but on the other hand, what is currently the "correct philosophy" of version handling? -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
