[ESS] Installing ESS on CentOS?

[Michael Hannon]

> Hi, Mike, et al.:
> 
>       How can I make a parallel install of Python 2.7?
> 
>       I've seen that suggestion before, but I don't know how to do that.
>       Moreover, if I accidentally replace 2.4.3, it could create more
>       problems.
>       I'm not sure I need Python 2.7.  I need to download files from an FTP
>       site and store them in a MySQL database.  A script that downloads
>       files from an FTP site works using Python 2.6.5 under Vista_x64 but
>       not under Python 2.4.3 under CentOS.  However, I was not able to
>       access MySQL with Python under Vista.
> 
>       Thanks for the detailed comparison of CentOS, Fedora, RHEL, etc.
> 
> 
>       Thanks,
>       Spencer

Hi, Spencer.  I haven't done a parallel installation of Python in quite a
while now, so I can't give you a real recipe.  I think you'd download the
source "tarball" from:

    http://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.7/Python-2.7.tgz

Then unpack (tar -xzvf Python-2.7.tgz) and check the "readme" or equivalent
files for further instructions.  The package will PROBABLY install in either:

    /usr/local

or

   /opt

by default.  Both of these directories are "orthogonal" to the directories
used by Redhat, Fedora, etc.

Assuming you have Python 2.7 installed in /usr/local, for instance, you
basically just invoke that version instead of the system version.  You can do
this in a number of ways:

    (1) Invoke it with the full path name:

            /usr/local/bin/python

        (modify the location as appropriate for your system)

    (2) Rename the new version and invoke Python via the new name:

            cd /usr/local/bin
            mv python python2.7
            python2.7

    (3) Change your PATH variable such that the operating system looks in
        /usr/local before it looks in /usr.  The details of this vary,
        depending on the shell you're using.  By default you're using bash,
        so you could modify the file:

            .bash_profile

        in your login directory to include something like:

            PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH
            export PATH

         After doing that, any unqualified reference to "python" will invoke
         /usr/local/bin/python

-- Mike