On Thu, 2004-11-25 at 23:08 -0800, Rick Graves wrote: > Post Turkey Day (#1 Shopping Day) Greetings! > > I am running CentOS-3 as a desktop distribution. > Everything is fine except for Idle, the integrated > development environment that comes with Python. > Python is version 2.2, but Idle is version 0.8. The > Idle 0.8 keyboard is driving me nuts. > > On my Windows box, I downloaded from www.python.org > and installed Python, and got Python 2.3 and Idle > 1.0.8, which is MUCH BETTER -- so much better, even > for code intended to be run only in Linux, I would > much rather code Python in Windows! > > Fedora comes with Python 2.3. > > I have my own CentOS mirror, so I added a fedora > mirror on the side, and I used rsync to grab only the > python files from fedora mirrors. > > I ran yum check-update. As a result, yum downloaded > all the headers and reported no problems. But when I > ran yum update, yum balked, giving a list of packages > that are dependent on python2.2, "that is not > available". The packages listed are: > > authconfig-gtk > comps-extras > firstboot > redhat-config-date > redhat-config-keyboard > redhat-config-kickstartrhpl > redhat-config-language > redhat-config-mouse > redhat-config-nfs > redhat-config-rootpassword > redhat-config-samba > redhat-config-securitylevel > redhat-config-soundcardredhat-config-users > redhat-config-xfree86 > > When I wrote to the yum mailing list, I put in: > > "Unless Python 2.3 breaks those packages (which I > think > is unlikely), I thought I should be able to upgrade > Python to a newer version without this kind of > objection." > > Seth wrote back that python 2.3 would break some of > the packages, aparently because the packages have > hardcoded paths, and the change of location from > /usr/lib/python2.2 to /usr/lib/python2.3 would break > some. > > One possible work around would be to grab the packages > on the above list from fedora in addition to just the > python packages, but I would consider that a last > resort. > > One off the wall idea is to install python 2.3, but > leave python 2.2 there for the packages with hardcoded > paths. (I am not sure whether yum would cooperate on > this plan.) > > Is there a cleaner solution to this problem? You'd be better off leaving python 2.2 alone and install python 2.3 in a different dir and using it for your devel work. Modifying a basic and important interpreter like python (esp for red hat-based systems) is generally a bad idea. It'd be like deciding to replace glibc in centos with glibc from fedora core 3. -sv