Question

On Ubuntu 10.10, I am unable to install lxml to python 2.7. Here are the steps I take.

sudo su -
apt-get install python2.7
apt-get install python-lxml

Note when running the install for python-lxml package, the following appeared:

INFO: using unknown version '/usr/bin/python2.7' (debian_defaults not up-to-date?)"

Importing the module in python2.6 (the version that comes standard with Ubuntu) works. However, importing the module under python2.7 does not. So how does one install Python modules to a non-default Python installation?

Answer 1

Another solution might be to use the following code:

try:
  from lxml import etree
except ImportError:
  try:
    # Python 2.5
    import xml.etree.cElementTree as etree
  except ImportError:
    try:
      # Python 2.5
      import xml.etree.ElementTree as etree
    except ImportError:
      try:
        # normal cElementTree install
        import cElementTree as etree
      except ImportError:
        try:
          # normal ElementTree install
          import elementtree.ElementTree as etree
        except ImportError:
          print("Failed to import ElementTree from any known place")

[Source]

This will import lxml if it is available, or the original ElementTree otherwise.

I use this code for my application on Google App Engine (using Python 2.7): on the server it will use lxml, on my machine it will use ElementTree.