Installing Python 2.6.4 on CentOS 5.4

[KirkD]

I have a fresh, up to date install of CentOS 5.4:

Linux 2.6.18-164.6.1.el5 #1 SMP Tue Nov 3 16:12:36 EST 2009 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

and I'm trying to build Python 2.6.4. Following the install instructions in the Python directory, I get this message when I execute:

./configure
make

Failed to find the necessary bits to build these modules:
bsddb185 dl imageop
sunaudiodev


and my Python install fails. I cannot seem to find any information on how to get these pieces in place such that the build will succeed, and in fact, most of them seem quite old and possibly deprecated.

Any tips are greatly appreciated.

-Kirk

[scottro]

The idea with CentOS (and RHEL) is that they are really enterprise oriented. That means, practically speaking, that they are designed to run what are generally considered server apps, e.g., Apache, LDAP, an SQL, whether MySQL or yourSQL (sorry, couldn't resist).

So, the most important thing for them is to be a stable platform that doesn't change, and, if a program will requre changes to the configuration files, don't include it.

Therefore, often you will find them behind in versions of various and sundry, such as gcc where they have 4.1, for example--so you can't build google's chromium browser which requires gcc 4.2.

This is the somewhat long winded explanation for why you will have packages that seem out of date.

You might try asking on CentOS forums about it, though not sure if you'll get answers or not.
(Not that they're rude, just that the majority of members are probably sysadmins, so don't install newer versions of something as intrinsic as python--as yum makes use of it, it's pretty important.)

[KirkD]

scottro,

Thanks for the explanation - that certainly makes sense with my experiences.

I do indeed have the same question posted on the CentOS forum as well as the Python forum - no replies at either location for a couple of days.

-Kirk

[KirkD]

I was able to get it done. Apparently the error message I was getting was just a warning message and the build did indeed succeed. The resulting build merely lacks those libraries, which are deprecated anyway. Duh.

-Kirk

[forkbomb]

For future reference:

It's not recommended (by me or otherwise), but it is possible to update certain parts of CentOS from the testing repo by using the enablerepo=testing (or something to that degree) directive when running an installation of some app.

The version in the test repos might not be new enough either but I've managed to get PHP to the version required by a certain PHP app I was deploying by resorting to the test repos.

Didn't run the box for much longer after that so I can't comment on the stability over the longterm (it was just for testing).

Edit: Believe the command was something like

 yum --enablerepo=c5-testing update php

(I know that's for PHP, but the concept is similar.) No promises about stability; YMMV; this may cause your processor to explode in a blaze of glory; etc. Especially given Python's heavy use in the Fedora family.