Re: [gentoo-user] ARGH I uninstalled python

[Alan McKinnon]

On Sunday 24 May 2009 00:08:50 Jorge Morais wrote:
> On Sat, 23 May 2009 03:51:40 -0700 (PDT)
>
> Jon Hardcastle <jd_hardcastle@×××××.com> wrote:
> > > And finally, couldn't he have gotten a binary package from
> > > http://tinderbox.dev.gentoo.org/default-linux/x86/dev-lang/
> > > ?
>
> Have you not yet tried to get python from a binary package?
> See http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-4669397.html#4669397
> That is both the easiest and cleanest solution I have found so far,
> (not that I have researched much, I admit).
> And maybe you don't even have to extract the tarball manually with
> tar; maybe you can use qmerge from app-portage/portage-utils
> (AFAIK it is written in C).
>
> Now, I do have concerns about your system having remains of multiple
> python installations.
>
> Any person with python knowledge can give an opinion on whether this
> is dangerous? And what is the easiest way to clean the mess?
>
> One idea: you can can recompile python with a safe
> prefix (such as a subdir of your home), issue make install (not as root,
> for increased safety) and see where Python install its files relative to
> the prefix, so you can delete them from your system
> (to be more careful before deleting a file, you can issue
> qfile <FILE> to see if it is owned by a portage-installed package.
> And in the end you can emerge python properly, from the sources, so all
> the ebuild logic (which is more than just ./configure, make and make
> install) gets applied, and you get a Python installation that respects your
> USE flags, CFLAGS and other system-specific settings (obviously you don't
> get such a system-customized python when you use the binary package from
> tinderbox).

make/install with --prefix /usr/local/

That's what it's there for.

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com