using python2.6 but mod_python still paython2.5

http://anibalpacheco.com/blog/post/p-37-python26-with-mod_python-in-debian/

As you may know, there are no packages yet for Python2.6 in debian or ubuntu. If you want to install it you can do it by hand and it will work perfectly (it did for me)

Google a bit and you will find this post: http://blog.pythonaro.com/2008/10/horrible-hack-to-get-python-26-on.html

You can follow the steps in the post without problem, then remember to update your supported and default versions under /usr/share/pyhton/debian_defaults

Also you can link modules available in 2.5 to be used by 2.6, for example Ipython, it works perfectly. Do symlinks from python2.6/site_packages/ pointing python2.5/site_packages. Although this is not the correct way, the correct way should be reinstall those modules under your new configuration.

But what about mod_python? it still remains to Python2.5 right? YES

Well, you have to do the same, download it from modpython.org and make and make install, be sure to install apache2-dev it will provide you with a tool needed in the compilation time.

All should work, also django is working perfectly in my new Python & mod_python 2.6 conf. under debian.

cheers!

http://blog.pythonaro.com/2008/10/horrible-hack-to-get-python-26-on.html

I wanted to try out the newly-released 2.6 version of our beloved Python, but unfortunately Debian didn't have a package for it yet (and it still doesn't). I wasn't too afraid of screwing up my laptop, as it's probably going to be formatted very soon anyway, and I didn't want to mess around with deb build scripts, so this is what I've done:

1. got the official source distribution, untarred and cd in the resulting dir Python2.6
2. got some additional packages: apt-get install tk8.4-dev libgdbm-dev libdb-dev libreadline-dev libsqlite3-dev libncurses5-dev (and possibly a few others)
3. ./configure --prefix=/usr --enable-ipv6
4. make
5. checkinstall -D --pkgname=python2.6 --pkgversion=2.6 --maintainer=g.lacava@gmail.com --inspect --backup=yes --install=no make altinstall
   This command allowed me to review the package contents and remove what I didn't need, which is basically everything outside the "python2.6" directories and which might already exist on my system (so I didn't want to overwrite it).
   I took out the lines /usr/bin/pydoc, /usr/bin/idle and /usr/share/man/man1/python.1
   UPDATE: when checkinstall asks if you want to create a default set of docs, say "yes", or you might get an error about ranlib further down (see comments).
6. installed the produced .deb package
7. copied back pydoc and idle (from the build directory) and /usr/share/man/man1/python.1 (from the Misc directory), all with "2.6" appended. I then set up alternatives with update-alternatives --install symlink name alternative priority (mainly in order to "redebianize" my impure karma); UPDATE: well, using alternatives (a 100% Debian solution which works perfectly well for loads of other multi-version script engines) will break your system, because some developers absolutely must reinvent the wheel every 5 minutes and then proudly announce that bugs won't be fixed. The stupidity of it all is staggering.

First impressions: 2.6 seems fast as hell. I don't know if this is due to the custom compilation though, rather than improvements in the runtime.