Question

A newbie question but…..

I’ve installed python2.7 on a host where the system version is 2.3 (2.7 at ~/python2.7/bin/python). I’d like to add a few packages such as MySQLdb but need setuptools.

The directions say that you can use –prefix as an argument. However, if I do the following:
sh setuptools-0.6c11-py2.7.egg –prefix=~/python2.7/bin/python

I get the error msg:
-bash-3.00$ sh setuptools-0.6c11-py2.7.egg –prefix=~/python2.7/bin/python
setuptools-0.6c11-py2.7.egg: line 3: exec: python2.7: not found

Am I not using the –prefix command correctly? Naturally, typing sh setuptools-0.6c11-py2.7.egg –help can’t find python either.

How do I tell setuptools where to find python explicitly? Any other issues I need to be aware of?

Answer 1

Add ~/python2.7/bin to your PATH, e.g.:

$ export PATH=$PATH:~/python2.7/bin
$ sh setuptools-0.6.c11-py2.7.egg

This should then work without needing a prefix, since python itself will tell setuptools what its default –prefix is.