Installing Python 2.6 on a system with Python 2.7.3

[jerome1232]

They mean in the top level of your python directory


So if you source code is at ~/Desktop/python2.6, you'd cd to ~/Desktop/python2.6 then run make. I keep source code I've installed at ~/src, since you have to keep it around if you want to remove the installed software in a nice clean manner in the future.

[agger]

I am surprised that you encountered problems in installation of python 2.6.
Here is a demonstration of three side by side python versions on my laptop (Ubuntu 11.04):

Yes, but Python 2.6 has been removed from the repositoried in 12.04 thus it's necessary to install from source e.g. I have to do this too, because I have a virtualenv which is dependent on 2.6.

[agger]

But I'm also having trouble installing. After doing a configure, make complains about missing bits:

Failed to find the necessary bits to build these modules:
_bsddb             _curses            _curses_panel   
_hashlib           _sqlite3           _ssl            
_tkinter           bsddb185           bz2             
dbm                dl                 gdbm            
imageop            linuxaudiodev      ossaudiodev     
readline           sunaudiodev        zlib            
To find the necessary bits, look in setup.py in detect_modules() for the module's name.


Failed to build these modules:
crypt              nis

Alas, I'm in a situation where having Python 2.6 would've been very helpful. Instead, I may have to find another way around it.

[jerome1232]

It seems there's a workaround for building python2.6 HERE which supposedly works, but I can't get it to go. I have however made progress. Steps I have taken:

First installed python2.7 dev dependencies, as I understand they are very similar for 2.6

sudo apt-get build-dep python2.7

configure seemed to go well, make ran but failed with an error.

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "./setup.py", line 1886, in <module>
    main()
  File "./setup.py", line 1881, in main
    'Lib/smtpd.py']
  File "/home/jeremy/src/Python-2.6/Lib/distutils/core.py", line 152, in setup
    dist.run_commands()
  File "/home/jeremy/src/Python-2.6/Lib/distutils/dist.py", line 975, in run_commands
    self.run_command(cmd)
  File "/home/jeremy/src/Python-2.6/Lib/distutils/dist.py", line 995, in run_command
    cmd_obj.run()
  File "/home/jeremy/src/Python-2.6/Lib/distutils/command/build.py", line 134, in run
    self.run_command(cmd_name)
  File "/home/jeremy/src/Python-2.6/Lib/distutils/cmd.py", line 333, in run_command
    self.distribution.run_command(command)
  File "/home/jeremy/src/Python-2.6/Lib/distutils/dist.py", line 995, in run_command
    cmd_obj.run()
  File "/home/jeremy/src/Python-2.6/Lib/distutils/command/build_ext.py", line 343, in run
    self.build_extensions()
  File "./setup.py", line 103, in build_extensions
    missing = self.detect_modules()
  File "./setup.py", line 944, in detect_modules
    sqlite_libdir = [os.path.abspath(os.path.dirname(sqlite_libfile))]
  File "/home/jeremy/src/Python-2.6/Lib/posixpath.py", line 119, in dirname
    i = p.rfind('/') + 1
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'rfind'
make: *** [sharedmods] Error 1

Any thoughts?