So I wrote in an earlier post about alt-installing Python 2.6 from source on CentOS, which was easy enough.  But, this made it more difficult to maintain and deploy as well as add modules.  So, I was lucky enough to come across a nice little yum repository hosted by Rizwan Kassim (Geekymedia.com) that contained an RPM that would do the alt-install work for me

I’m aware that EPEL has a Python 2.6 package, but the Geekymedia RPMs have a whole flurry of modules you can add as well as an RPM for setuptools which will make your life immeasurably easier when running Python 2.4 and 2.6 side-by-side for installing python packages.

The only problems with the Geekymedia RPMs are that the binary packages are all 32-bit (I’m running servers here folks!) and I was unable to get the MySQL-python26 one to work right for me.

So, let’s get down to business.

First I wanted to get rid of the existing python26 alt-install and EPEL rpms I installed.  This is only needed if you followed my last tutorial.

rpm -qa | grep python26 | rpm -e --nodeps $(xargs)
rm -rf /usr/local/lib/python2.6
rm -rf /usr/local/include/python2.6
rm -rf /usr/local/lib/libpython2.6.a
rm -rf /usr/bin/python2.6
rm -rf /usr/include/python2.6
rm -rf /usr/lib/python2.6
rm -rf /usr/lib64/libpython2.6.so.1.0
rm -rf /usr/lib64/python2.6
rm -rf /usr/local/bin/python2.6
rm -rf /usr/local/bin/python2.6-config
rm -rf /etc/rpm/macros.python26
rm -rf /root/MySQL-python26-1.2.3-0.3.c1.src.rpm
rm -rf /usr/bin/python26
rm -rf /usr/share/doc/python26-2.6.5
rm -rf /usr/share/doc/python26-libs-2.6.5
rm -rf /usr/src/Python-2.6.4/PC/os2emx/python26.def

Now, let us get started in earnest.  The next few steps are for compiling and building our own distributable RPMs and only need to be done once, after this you can use the already built RPMs everywhere.

Install stuff for building the RPMs:

yum -y install rpm-build gcc-c++

Install the dependancies for building the RPMs from source.

yum -y install readline-devel openssl-devel gmp-devel ncurses-devel \ 
gdbm-devel expat-devel libGL-devel libX11-devel tcl-devel tk-devel \ 
tix-devel sqlite-devel db4-devel

Grab the Geekymedia src rpms.

rpm -Uvh http://mirrors.geekymedia.com/centos/python26-2.6-geekymedia1.src.rpm
rpm -Uvh http://mirrors.geekymedia.com/centos/python26-setuptools-0.6c9-5.src.rpm

Build and install the alt-installed Python 2.6 RPMs

rpmbuild -bb /usr/src/redhat/SPECS/python.spec
rpm -Uvh /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/x86_64/python26-2.6-geekymedia1.x86_64.rpm
rpm -Uvh /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/x86_64/python26-libs-2.6-geekymedia1.x86_64.rpm
rpm -Uvh /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/x86_64/python26-tools-2.6-geekymedia1.x86_64.rpm
rpm -Uvh /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/x86_64/python26-devel-2.6-geekymedia1.x86_64.rpm
rpm -Uvh /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/x86_64/python26-test-2.6-geekymedia1.x86_64.rpm
rpm -Uvh /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/x86_64/tkinter26-2.6-geekymedia1.x86_64.rpm

Build and install the alt-installed setuptools:

rpmbuild -bb /usr/src/redhat/SPECS/python26-setuptools.spec
rpm -Uvh /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/noarch/python26-setuptools-0.6c9-5.noarch.rpm  

For future machines you can dump all those RPMs in your own repo or on an nfs share and install them.  You’ll only need to do something like:

yum -y install tk tix
rpm -Uvh /path/to/rpms/python26/*.rpm

And finally, we can install the PyPI MySQL-python package (you may need to login and out again to refresh your PYTHONPATH):

yum -y mysql-devel
curl http://superb-sea2.dl.sourceforge.net/project/mysql-python/mysql-python/1.2.3/MySQL-python-1.2.3.tar.gz | tar zxv
cd MySQL-python-1.2.3
python26 setup.py build
python26 setup.py install

Note how I called the script explicitly using the following python binary: /usr/bin/python26

Now we’re good to give it the old test thus:

python26 -c "import MySQLdb"

If it doesn’t spit out an error, you’re aces. Bazinga!