Easily install all Python versions under Linux and OSX using collective.buildout.python

Here are short instructions how to install all versions (2.4, 2.5, 2.6, 2.7 and 3.1) of Python interpreters on UNIX system. The instructions were tested on Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx Linux but should work on other systems as is. The installation is based of downloading, compiling and installing different Pythons and their libraries using buildout tool. A buildout configuration for doing this is maintained by a Plone community.

This buildout is especially useful to get Python 2.4 properly running under the latest Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx. This is because Ubuntu repositories won’t ship with Python 2.4 packages anymore.

The installation will also include static compilation of some very popular libraries. These are dependencies for other Python packages including, but not limited, to

• libjpeg
• Python imaging library
• readline

Prerequisites

• Some Python version is installed (OS default)
• GCC compiler is installed (sudo apt-get install build-essential)
• Subversion tool is installed (sudo apt-get install subversion)

Running it

svn co http://svn.plone.org/svn/collective/buildout/python/
cd python
python bootstrap.py
bin/buildout

Using it

All Pythons are under virtualenv installations. This means that you can activate one Python configuration for your shell once easily (python command will run under different Python versions).

Activating Python 2.4

source python/python-2.4/bin/activate
(python-2.4)moo@murskaamo:~/code$ python -V
Python 2.4.6

Check that Python Imaging Library works

python
Python 2.4.6 (#1, Jul 16 2010, 10:31:46)
[GCC 4.4.3] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import PIL

(No exceptions raised, Python Imaging Library works well).

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Installing Python Imaging Library (PIL) under virtualenv or buildout

I have greatly struggled to have PIL library support in isolated Python environments like virtualenv –no-site-packages.

For example, when installing Satchmo shop under virtualenv:

../bin/clonesatchmo.pyhe Python Imaging Library is not installed. Install from your distribution binaries.

../bin/clonesatchmo.py
The Python Imaging Library is not installed. Install from your distribution binaries.

Though it clearly is there, installed by easy_install PIL command:

ls ../lib/python2.5/site-packages/PIL-1.1.7-py2.5-linux-x86_64.egg
ArgImagePlugin.py	 ExifTags.py		  GimpGradientFile.pyc...

Does anyone know if this problem is with PIL itself, eggified PIL or something else?

In any case, there is an easy workaround: use system-wide PIL (sudo apt-get install python-imaging) and symlink PIL from your site-wide installation under the isolated Python environment:

(satchmo-py25)mulli% pwd
/srv/plone/mmaspecial/satchmo-py25/lib/python2.5/site-packages
(satchmo-py25)mulli% ln -s /usr/lib/python2.4/PIL .