Question

I would like to use pysqlite interface between Python and sdlite database. I have already Python and SQLite on my computer. But I have troubles with installation of pysqlite. During the installation I get the following error message:

error: command ‘gcc’ failed with exit status 1

As far as I understood the problems appears because version of my Python is 2.4.3 and SQLite is integrated in Python since 2.5. However, I also found out that it IS possible to build sqlite for Python 2.4 (using some tricks, probably).

Does anybody know how to build sqlite for Python 2.4?

As another option I could try to install higher version of Python. However I do not have root privileges. Does anybody know what will be the easiest way to solve the problem (build SQLite fro Python 2.4, or install newer version of Python)? I have to mention that I would not like to overwrite the old version version of Python.

Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

You can download and install Python to your home directory.

$ cd
$ mkdir opt
$ mkdir downloads
$ cd downloads
$ wget http://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.6.2/Python-2.6.2.tgz
$ tar xvzf Python-2.6.2.tgz
$ cd Python-2.6.2
$ ./configure --prefix=$HOME/opt/ --enable-unicode=ucs4
$ make
$ make install

Then, (if you are using bash) in your .bash_profile do

export PATH=$HOME/opt/bin/:$PATH
export PYTHONPATH=$HOME/opt/lib:$HOME/opt/lib/site-packages:$PYTHONPATH

Then, source the file to make it available

$ cd
$ source .bash_profile
$ python -V

where python -V will return the python version. If the correct version appears, any packages that you run with Python’s setup.py util (assuming the developer followed the correct conventions) will install in ~/opt/lib/python2.x/site-packages directory.