Issues migrating from Solaris to RedHat 9?

[Tom Loredo]

Hi folks-

I'm about to move from a Solaris 8/SPARC environment to a Dell running
RedHat 9. Are there any issues I need to be aware of in bringing my
Python code over (mostly scientific computation)? In particular, I know
earlier versions of RH shipped with an "old" Python installed as "python"
and that installation of more recent versions should not overwrite
"python" (e.g., install as "python2.3"). Is this still the case in RH9?
Any other issues? I will be simultaneously developing for multiple
platforms, so avoiding something like having to have "/bin/env python2.3"
at the top of scripts is highly desirable.

Also, if I send scripts to other RH users, will there be issues
(in particular with RH8, since that is still widely used)?

Thanks,
Tom Loredo

 

[Martin Franklin]

Hi folks-

I'm about to move from a Solaris 8/SPARC environment to a Dell running
RedHat 9. Are there any issues I need to be aware of in bringing my
Python code over (mostly scientific computation)? In particular, I know
earlier versions of RH shipped with an "old" Python installed as "python"
and that installation of more recent versions should not overwrite
"python" (e.g., install as "python2.3"). Is this still the case in RH9?
Any other issues? I will be simultaneously developing for multiple
platforms, so avoiding something like having to have "/bin/env python2.3"
at the top of scripts is highly desirable.

Also, if I send scripts to other RH users, will there be issues
(in particular with RH8, since that is still widely used)?

Tom,

RedHat 9 ships with python 2.2.2 in /usr/bin/python (also
/usr/bin/python2 and /usr/bin/python2.2 - they are all the same thing!

RedHat 8 has the same setup but it is version 2.2.1 so no problems with
that

If you are going to install 2.3.* then I would (and have) put it into
/usr/local/ as this will not cause any problems with the RedHat
applications that use python. If you put it into /usr/bin as python or
python2 you will end up having to compile all the extensions that RedHat
ships with python (PyGTK, M2Crypto... and a whole lot more)


All in all it may be worth sticking to the RedHat python (2.2.2 / 2.2.1)
for the short term (till RedHat 10?) especially if you are releasing
these programs to other people/platforms....


HTH
Martin

 

[Paul Boddie]

I'm about to move from a Solaris 8/SPARC environment to a Dell running
RedHat 9. Are there any issues I need to be aware of in bringing my
Python code over (mostly scientific computation)?

I suppose that there could be compilation issues with any C/C++
extensions you may have written - most mainstream extensions should
have resolved any such portability problems by now, GCC 3.x surprises
notwithstanding.

In particular, I know earlier versions of RH shipped with an "old" Python
installed as "python" and that installation of more recent versions should not
overwrite "python" (e.g., install as "python2.3"). Is this still the case in
RH9?

I don't believe so. Still, you should be aware of what you're
installing (and where) regardless of platform. Generally, Python gets
installed into /usr/local unless you configure the source code
installation process differently. On Red Hat, the default Python has
always lived in /usr.

Any other issues? I will be simultaneously developing for multiple
platforms, so avoiding something like having to have "/bin/env python2.3"
at the top of scripts is highly desirable.

Shouldn't that be /usr/bin/env ...?

Also, if I send scripts to other RH users, will there be issues
(in particular with RH8, since that is still widely used)?

Well, I don't know what the default Python release is on RH8. You may
want to consider exactly that particular trick (/usr/bin/env ...) to
ensure that a suitably up-to-date Python release is used to run your
code on RH8. Certainly, I'd regard that as a better alternative than
adding explicit tests in every program or getting those users to
install Python into a different prefix (/usr/local) and then to manage
their paths, although you could help with some shell scripts, I
suppose.

Paul