Question

I compiled Python 2.6.6 with google-perf tools (tcmalloc) library to eliminate some of the memory issues I was having with the default 2.6.5. After getting 2.6.6 going it seems to not work becuase I think having issues with the default 2.6.5 install in Ubuntu. Will none of the binaries installed from the software channel like wxPython and setuptools work properly with 2.6.6. Do these need to be recompiled? Any other suggestions to get it working smoothly. Can I still set 2.6.5 as default without changing the Path? The path looks in usr/local/bin first.

Answer 1

A good general rule of thumb is to NEVER use the default system installed Python for any software development beyond miscellaneous system admin scripts. This applies on all UNIXes including Linux and OS/X.

Instead, build a good Python distro that you control, with the libraries (Python and C) that you need, and install this tarball in a non-system directory such as /opt/devpy or /data/package/python or /home/python. And why mess with 2.6 when 2.7.2 is available?

And when you are building it, make sure that all of its dependencies are in its own directory tree (RPATH) and that any system dependencies (.so files) are copied into its directory tree. Here is my version. It might not work if you just run the whole shell script. I always copy and paste sections of this into a terminal window and verify that each step worked OK. Make sure your terminal properties are set to allow lots of lines of scrollback, or only paste a couple of lines at a time.

(actually, after making a few tweaks I think this may be runnable as a script, however I would recommend something like ./pybuild.sh >pylog 2>&1 so you can comb through the output and verify that everything built OK.

This was built on Ubuntu 64 bit

#!/bin/bash

shopt -s compat40

export WGET=echo
#uncomment the following if you are running for the first time
export WGET=wget

sudo apt-get -y install build-essential
sudo apt-get -y install zlib1g-dev libxml2-dev libxslt1-dev libssl-dev libncurses5-dev 
sudo apt-get -y install libreadline6-dev autotools-dev autoconf automake libtool
sudo apt-get -y install libsvn-dev mercurial subversion git-core
sudo apt-get -y install libbz2-dev libgdbm-dev sqlite3 libsqlite3-dev
sudo apt-get -y install curl libcurl4-gnutls-dev
sudo apt-get -y install libevent-dev libev-dev librrd4 rrdtool
sudo apt-get -y install uuid-dev libdb4.8-dev memcached libmemcached-dev 
sudo apt-get -y install libmysqlclient-dev libexpat1-dev 

cd ~
$WGET 'http://code.google.com/p/google-perftools/downloads/detail?name=google-perftools-1.7.tar.gz'
$WGET http://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.7.2/Python-2.7.2.tgz
tar zxvf Python-2.7.2.tgz
cd Python-2.7.2

#following is needed if you have an old version of Mercurial installed
#export HAS_HG=not-found

# To provide a uniform build environment
unset PYTHONPATH PYTHONSTARTUP PYTHONHOME PYTHONCASEOK PYTHONIOENCODING
unset LD_RUN_PATH LD_LIBRARY_PATH LD_DEBUG LD_TRACE_LOADED_OBJECTS 
unset LD_PRELOAD SHLIB_PATH LD_BIND_NOW LD_VERBOSE

## figure out whether this is a 32 bit or 64 bit system
m=`uname -m`
if [[ $m =~ .*64 ]]; then
   export CC="gcc -m64" 
   NBITS=64
elif [[ $m =~ .*86 ]]; then
   export CC="gcc -m32"
   NBITS=32
else # we are confused so bail out
   echo $m
   exit 1
fi

# some stuff related to distro independent build
# extra_link_args = ['-Wl,-R/data1/python27/lib']
#--enable-shared and a relative 
# RPATH[0] (eg LD_RUN_PATH='${ORIGIN}/../lib')

export TARG=/data1/packages/python272
export TCMALLOC_SKIP_SBRK=true
#export CFLAGS='-ltcmalloc' # Google's fast malloc
export COMMONLDFLAGS='-Wl,-rpath,\$$ORIGIN/../lib -Wl,-rpath-link,\$$ORIGIN:\$$ORIGIN/../lib:\$$ORIGIN/../../lib -Wl,-z,origin -Wl,--enable-new-dtags'
# -Wl,-dynamic-linker,$TARG/lib/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2
export LDFLAGS=$COMMONLDFLAGS
./configure --prefix=$TARG --with-dbmliborder=bdb:gdbm --enable-shared --enable-ipv6

# if you have ia32-libs installed on a 64-bit system
#export COMMONLDFLAGS="-L/lib32 -L/usr/lib32 -L`pwd`/lib32 -Wl,-rpath,$TARG/lib32 -Wl,-rpath,$TARG/usr/lib32"

make
# ignore failure to build the following since they are obsolete or deprecated
# _tkinter bsddb185 dl imageop sunaudiodev 

#install it and collect any dependency libraries - not needed with RPATH
sudo mkdir -p $TARG
sudo chown `whoami`.users $TARG
make install

# collect binary libraries ##REDO THIS IF YOU ADD ANY ADDITIONAL MODULES##
function collect_binary_libs {
cd $TARG
find . -name '*.so' | sed 's/^/ldd -v /' >elffiles
echo "ldd -v bin/python" >>elffiles
chmod +x elffiles
./elffiles | sed 's/.*=> //;s/ .*//;/:$/d;s/^              *//' | sort -u | sed 's/.*/cp -L & lib/' >lddinfo
# mkdir lib
chmod +x lddinfo
./lddinfo
cd ~
}
collect_binary_libs

#set the path
cd ~
export PATH=$TARG/bin:$PATH

#installed setuptools
$WGET http://pypi.python.org/packages/2.7/s/setuptools/setuptools-0.6c11-py2.7.egg
chmod +x setuptools-0.6c11-py2.7.egg
./setuptools-0.6c11-py2.7.egg

#installed virtualenv
tar zxvf virtualenv-1.6.1.tar.gz
cd virtualenv-1.6.1
python setup.py install
cd ~

# created a base virtualenv that should work for almost all projects
# we make it relocatable in case its location in the filesystem changes.
cd ~
python virtualenv-1.6.1/virtualenv.py /data1/py27base # first make it
python virtualenv-1.6.1/virtualenv.py --relocatable  /data1/py27base #then relocatabilize

# check it out
source ~/junk/bin/activate
python --version

# fill the virtualenv with useful modules
# watch out for binary builds that may have dependency problems

export LD_RUN_PATH='\$$ORIGIN:\$$ORIGIN/../lib:\$$ORIGIN/../../lib'
easy_install pip
pip install cython
pip install lxml
pip install httplib2
pip install python-memcached
pip install amqplib
pip install kombu
pip install carrot
pip install py_eventsocket
pip install haigha

# extra escaping of $ signs
export LDFLAGS='-Wl,-rpath,\$\$$ORIGIN/../lib:\$\$$ORIGIN/../../lib -Wl,-rpath-link,\$\$$ORIGIN/../lib -Wl,-z,origin -Wl,--enable-new-dtags'
# even more complex to build this one since we need some autotools and
# have to pull source from a repository
mkdir rabbitc
cd rabbitc
hg clone http://hg.rabbitmq.com/rabbitmq-codegen/
hg clone http://hg.rabbitmq.com/rabbitmq-c/
cd rabbitmq-c
autoreconf -i
make clean
./configure --prefix=/usr
make
sudo make install
cd ~

# for zeromq we get the latest source of the library
$WGET http://download.zeromq.org/zeromq-2.1.7.tar.gz
tar zxvf zeromq-2.1.7.tar.gz
cd zeromq-2.1.7
make clean
./configure --prefix=/usr
make
sudo make install
cd ~
# need less escaping of $ signs
export LDFLAGS='-Wl,-rpath,\$ORIGIN/../lib:\$ORIGIN/../../lib -Wl,-rpath-link,\$ORIGIN/../lib -Wl,-z,origin -Wl,--enable-new-dtags'
pip install pyzmq
pip install pylibrabbitmq # need to build C library and install first
pip install pylibmc
pip install pycurl
export LDFLAGS=$COMMONLDFLAGS


pip install cherrypy
pip install pyopenssl # might need some ldflags on this one?
pip install diesel
pip install eventlet
pip install fapws3
pip install gevent
pip install boto
pip install jinja2
pip install mako
pip install paste
pip install twisted
pip install flup
pip install pika
pip install pymysql
# pip install py-rrdtool # not on 64 bit???
pip install PyRRD
pip install tornado
pip install redis

# for tokyocabinet we need the latest source of the library
$WGET http://fallabs.com/tokyocabinet/tokyocabinet-1.4.47.tar.gz
tar zxvf tokyocabinet-1.4.47.tar.gz
cd tokyocabinet-1.4.47
make clean
./configure --prefix=/usr --enable-devel
make
sudo make install
cd ..
$WGET http://fallabs.com/tokyotyrant/tokyotyrant-1.1.41.tar.gz
tar zxvf tokyotyrant-1.1.41.tar.gz
cd tokyotyrant-1.1.41
make clean
./configure --prefix=/usr --enable-devel
make
sudo make install
cd ..
pip install tokyo-python
pip install solrpy
pip install pysolr
pip install sunburnt
pip install txamqp
pip install littlechef
pip install PyChef
pip install pyvb
pip install bottle
pip install werkzeug
pip install BeautifulSoup
pip install XSLTools
pip install numpy
pip install coverage
pip install pylint
# pip install PyChecker  ???
pip install pycallgraph
pip install mkcode
pip install pydot
pip install sqlalchemy
pip install buzhug
pip install flask
pip install restez
pip install pytz
pip install mcdict
# need less escaping of $ signs

pip install py-interface
# pip install paramiko # pulled in by another module
pip install pexpect

# SVN interface
$WGET http://pysvn.barrys-emacs.org/source_kits/pysvn-1.7.5.tar.gz
tar zxvf pysvn-1.7.5.tar.gz
cd pysvn-1.7.5/Source
python setup.py backport
python setup.py configure
make
cd ../Tests
make
cd ../Sources
mkdir -p $TARG/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pysvn
cp pysvn/__init__.py $TARG/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pysvn
cp pysvn/_pysvn_2_7.so $TARG/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pysvn
cd ~

# pip install protobuf #we have to do this the hard way
$WGET http://protobuf.googlecode.com/files/protobuf-2.4.1.zip
unzip protobuf-2.4.1.zip
cd protobuf-2.4.1
make clean
./configure --prefix=/usr
make
sudo make install
cd python
python setup.py install
cd ~

pip install riak
pip install ptrace
pip install html5lib
pip install metrics

#redo the "install binary libraries" step
collect_binary_libs

# link binaries in the lib directory to avoid search path errors and also
# to reduce the number of false starts to find the library
for i in `ls $TARG/lib/python2.7/lib-dynload/*.so`
do
ln -f $i $TARG/lib/`basename $i`
done
# for the same reason link the whole lib directory to some other places in the tree
ln -s ../.. $TARG/lib/python2.7/site-packages/lib
      
# bundle it up and save it for packaging
cd /
tar cvf - .$TARG |gzip >~/py272-$NBITS.tar.gz
cd ~

# after untarring on another machine, we have a program call imports.py which imports 
# every library as a quick check that it works. For a more positive check, run it like this
# strace -e trace=stat,fstat,open python imports.py >strace.txt 2>&1 
# grep -v ' = -1' strace.txt |grep 'open(' >opens.txt
# sed <opens.txt 's/^open("//;s/".*//' |sort -u |grep -v 'dynload' |grep '\.so' >straced.txt
# ls -1d /data1/packages/python272/lib/* |sort -u >lib.txt
# then examine the strace output to see how many places it searches before finding it.
# a successful library load will be a call to open that doesn't end with ' = -1'
# If it takes too many tries to find a particular library, then another symbolic link may 
# be a good idea