Installing Python 2.6 from source on Ubuntu Hardy

Date: 2008-10-02 | Modified: 2008-10-03 | Tags: install_setup, linux, python, ubuntu | 12 Comments

Python 2.6 was released yesterday! This version aims to smooth the transition from Python 2.5 to Python 3.0 which is planned for release soon (currently available as a release candidate). Python 3.0 will be break backwards compatibility with the 2.x series. Python 2.6 is backwards compatible with 2.5. All the backwards compatible features of 3.0 have been backported to 2.6.

One of the new 2.6 features I'm particularly intersted in is the new multiprocessing module which has a similar interface to the threading module, but it uses processes instead of threads. This avoids the limitations imposed by the Global Interpreter Lock in a multi-threaded Python program. Yet it still has the nice communications and management features like Pipe()s, Queues, Pools, etc. I didn't plan to focus so much on the multiprocessing module in this post-- I just want to document my install notes on Ubuntu Linux. For all the new features in 2.6 see What's New in Python 2.6. (It is a long list).

Download the Python 2.6 compressed source tarball

$ cd incoming
$ wget http://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.6/Python-2.6.tgz

Unpack
```
$ tar zxvf Python-2.6.tgz
```
Read the README at ~/incoming/Python-2.6/README

Install prerequisites (Disclaimer: I know nothing about libraries, packages, dependencies, etc. This is what I did-- I am not sure if I grabbed the correct prerequisites or not.)

$ sudo apt-get install build-essential
$ sudo apt-get install libncursesw5-dev
$ sudo apt-get install libreadline5-dev
$ sudo apt-get install libssl-dev
$ sudo apt-get install libgdbm-dev
$ sudo apt-get install libbz2-dev
$ sudo apt-get install libc6-dev
$ sudo apt-get install libsqlite3-dev
$ sudo apt-get install tk-dev

Configure. I am installing to ~/lib/python2.6.

$ cd Python-2.6
$ ./configure --prefix=/home/sofeng/lib/python2.6

Make

$ make

Note I got the following message:

Failed to find the necessary bits to build these modules:
bsddb185           sunaudiodev   
To find the necessary bits, look in setup.py in detect_modules() for the module's name.

I was not able to find the Ubuntu packages for these.

Try it out (Optional)

$ ./python

Python 2.6 (r26:66714, Oct  2 2008, 15:32:46) 
[GCC 4.2.3 (Ubuntu 4.2.3-2ubuntu7)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>

Test (Optional)

$ make test

I got the following status:

327 tests OK.
33 tests skipped:
    test_aepack test_al test_applesingle test_bsddb185 test_bsddb3
    test_cd test_cl test_codecmaps_cn test_codecmaps_hk
    test_codecmaps_jp test_codecmaps_kr test_codecmaps_tw test_curses
    test_gl test_imgfile test_kqueue test_linuxaudiodev test_macos
    test_macostools test_normalization test_ossaudiodev test_pep277
    test_py3kwarn test_scriptpackages test_socketserver test_startfile
    test_sunaudiodev test_timeout test_urllib2net test_urllibnet
    test_winreg test_winsound test_zipfile64
Those skips are all expected on linux2.

Install
```
$ make install
```
Finally, I added ~/lib/python/bin/python2.6 to my PATH

Notes

The first time I ran, I got this message:

Failed to find the necessary bits to build these modules:
_hashlib           _ssl               bsddb185
bz2                gdbm               readline
sunaudiodev
To find the necessary bits, look in setup.py in detect_modules() for the module's name.

I think I found Ubuntu packages for some of them:

_hashlib and _ssl in libssl-dev
bz2 in libbz2-dev
gdbm in libgdbm-dev
readline in libreadline5-dev

12 Comments

#1 -- commented on 2008-10-03:

For me (Hardy, too), additionally the following packages were missing:

libsqlite3-dev (for sqlite3) tk-dev (for tkinter)

I couldn't find packages for:

_dbm

I recommend using 'checkinstall', because that way you can later easily replace the RC1 with the final:

$ sudo checkinstall

#2 Eliot commented on 2008-10-03:

--, Thanks for the tip. I probably installed sqlite and tkinter already, so I missed them. I will look into checkinstall

#3 Sybren A. Stüvel commented on 2008-10-03:

An easier way to get all the required dependencies, is to use apt-get to install the build dependencies for Python 2.5:

 apt-get build-dep python2.5

The only warnings I get then are:

Failed to find the necessary bits to build these modules:
bsddb185           sunaudiodev
To find the necessary bits, look in setup.py in
detect_modules() for the module's name.

#4 Eliot commented on 2008-10-03:

Sybren, This sounds like a much easier way. Thanks a lot for the tip!

#5 Marek Kubica commented on 2008-10-17:

bsddb185 is an obsolete module and sunaudiodev is only available on Sun Solaris.

#6 Eliot commented on 2008-10-17:

Marek, Thanks for the information.

#7 Henry.Huang commented on 2008-12-06:

i got all down except:

_dbm

How could get _dbm module?

#8 Eliot commented on 2008-12-08:

Henry, I did not get this error so I'm not sure, but I found a possible solution here: http://evalinux.wordpress.com/2008/12/04/installing-python-30-on-ubuntu-810-intrepid-ibex/#comment-493

#9 James Rubino commented on 2009-04-03:

How can I make Python 2.6 the "Grand Pumba" of python installs in my system?

#10 Jeff commented on 2009-04-16:

I second that question. To remove all previous installations, and only use 2.6, what do we do?

anyone?

#11 Eliot commented on 2009-04-16:

James, Jeff,
If you wait another week (April 23), you can get Python 2.6 as the default python package in Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope. http://packages.ubuntu.com/jaunty/python/python If you can't wait, the Jaunty Release Candidate is available today.

#12 shahryar commented on 2010-01-05:

so whats the solution for the dependencies problem then?


Name:	Required
Email:	Required, but not displayed
Website:	Optional
Comment:	Format using Markdown. (No HTML.) Code blocks: prefix each line by at least 4 spaces or 1 tab (and a blank line before and after) Code span: surround with backticks Blockquotes: prefix lines to be quoted with > Links: <URL> Links w/ description: [description](URL)

SaltyCrane Blog