This makes a lot of good points, but some bad ones.
Esp. the "installing python" one. Just use your package manager to install all the versions you need.
And for "Packaging and Dependencies", just use pip.
Esp. the "installing python" one. Just use your package manager to install all the versions you need.
And for "Packaging and Dependencies", just use pip.
And installing packages into the system python (if that's what you're suggesting) is the path to madness. It's much better to use virtualenvs you can throw away at will. All in all, it's usually best just to leave the system Python alone to avoid causing problems with any other packages that may depend on it being in a consistent state.
Unlike startups, we enterprise dudes don't have the liberty of choosing the latest distros with better base Python versions.in some cases,the machines don't even have a compiler installed.
Try running your funky new admin script on these rhel5 boxen is a pain.
I've resorted to compiling with LD_RUN_PATH, -rpath & -r set.
I think this should be included in the python-guide for the sanity of other devops dudes
I know it was annoying how long RHEL lasted with Python 2.4, but now the latest RHEL, Debian-stable, and Ubuntu LTS all have Python 2.6, so write to Python 2.6 if your company uses those OSs, there's not excuse to write incompatible code targeted at Python 2.7.
In many Linux distributions it is impossible to replace the Python version, core parts of the OS like package management will break. It is possible to install another version in parallel and use "virtualenv --python=" to use it for an application. If you are using RHEL/CentOS 5 you can install the python26 package from the EPEL repository.
Mostly I agree with you, but installing python on windows is a PITA compared to *nix.
PIP works until you need something that requires compiling extensions which is also a PITA on windows.
IIRC easy_install can install binaries, but I could be wrong about that since I don't do windows development anymore and thus pip works for me 99% of the time.
Regardless, my point is, though I think we all wish it was as simple as using your package manager and pip, it simply isn't that way for everyone.
And it probably never will be, but we can always make it simpler. :)
Whether you or I prefer it or not, there are lots of people who either by choice or not develop on windows and in some cases deploy to windows servers.
And for those people, things aren't as simple as "use the package manager and pip" no matter how much anyone would like it to be.
reality sucks.
You could use *.exe installers such as http://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/
Advanced users could use mingw to compile extensions.
(It is, however, poorly documented.)