Handling of multiple Pythons on the same system

[Lowell Gilbert]

Kirk Strauser <kirk at strauser.com> writes:

> How do you manage multiple versions of Python on the same machine?
> 
> I'm running Zope on one of my servers and it requires Python 2.1 (and has
> known issues with later versions).  I want to install other applications
> that require Python 2.3.  I've installed the lang/python (2.3) and
> lang/python21 ports and everything is basically OK.
> 
> Except, now, that I want to use the databases/py-psycopg port with both
> versions of Python.  Whenever I build the port, I get either:
> 
>     py21-psycopg-1.1.7
> 
> or
> 
>     py23-psycopg-1.1.7
> 
> depending on whether /usr/local/bin/python is a link to python2.1 or
> python2.3 at the port's build time.  Those packages are mutually exclusive;
> they both write some files to the same place, and write other files to
> version-specific paths.
> 
> This is quickly becoming a hassle.  Is there a good workaround for this
> situation?

You should talk to the port maintainer about it.
The only suggestion I can think of is to set up a second port PREFIX
for the ports that depend on the older Python.