Multiple versions of the same package installed at same time [LWN.net]

Multiple versions of the same package installed at same time

Posted Nov 13, 2009 16:18 UTC (Fri) by Cato (subscriber, #7643)
In reply to: Multiple versions of the same package installed at same time by roblucid
Parent article: Python moratorium and the future of 2.x

I think you've made my point for me, which was that installing a second
version is significantly more complex than just installing the default
version.

I'm aware that some distros create 'python3' packages, but that's really a
hack rather than a general solution - why isn't it possible to pull a newer
version of Python from a later version of the distro (e.g. Ubuntu 9.10 while
using an earlier version of Ubuntu), and cleanly install it with
dependencies, maybe in a dynamically created chroot or simply a new directory
prefix.

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Multiple versions of the same package installed at same time

Posted Nov 14, 2009 17:35 UTC (Sat) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]

It is better this way, I think. I don't want a second set of the same libraries lying around; if I did I would do the chroot myself. It does not look like a hack to me, at least on Debian.

# ls -l /usr/bin/python
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 jul 17 01:48 /usr/bin/python -> python2.5