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by espeed 5167 days ago
There have always been dependencies outside the standard library, and those have had dependencies -- which more often than not, are incompatible with whatever version of Python my environment is set up for.

Create a virtual environment for the Python version you want to use, and install the package with pip (pip will install all the dependencies in your project's local environment)...

  $ mkdir myproj
  $ cd myproj
  $ virtualenv --python=python2.7 env
  $ source env/bin/activate
  (env)$ pip install somepackage
2 comments
mas1n 5167 days ago
Or you can install virtualenvwrapper (http://www.doughellmann.com/projects/virtualenvwrapper/) and after a little configuration...

  $ mkvirtualenv env1
  (env1)$ pip install somepackage
Creating self containing python projects has never been so easy!
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nkoren 5167 days ago
Yep, I learned this trick on my first go-around. The problem has occurred when I've tried to run scripts with dependencies which somehow are only available in mutually incompatible versions of Python. I'm not sure how this is possible (it's baffling -- it shouldn't be possible), but it's happened three out of four times that I've tried to use a Python script of any real consequence. Usually after half a day of futilely trying to find an environment which will actually accommodate all dependencies, I end up having to port everything to whatever version of Python appears to be the most common denominator. In all fairness to Python, this is relatively easy to do (except in one case, when I had to hire a Python-expert friend to do it), but it still means that what should've been a five-minute affair (less the dependency hell) turns into a full-day affair.

Like I say, I've probably just been unlucky. But at this point it's given me a pretty serious aversion to Python. Will probably have to get over that someday, I suppose.

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anthonyb 5167 days ago
Which packages? I'm curious, because unless you're trying to work in Python 2 and 3 at the same time, I can't think of any packages which don't support 2.5, 2.6 and 2.7. And I've been programming in Python about 10 years or so. Unless you're going super-bleeding-edge, it shouldn't be a problem.
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