Elaborate on the role of the altinstall target when installing multiple

versions.
This commit is contained in:
Skip Montanaro 2008-03-05 16:41:09 +00:00
parent f3c0559b5e
commit 86d4e7a146
1 changed files with 21 additions and 8 deletions

29
README
View File

@ -968,14 +968,8 @@ created. The only file not installed with a version number in its
name is the manual page, installed as "/usr/local/man/man1/python.1"
by default.
If you have a previous installation of Python that you don't
want to replace yet, use
make altinstall
This installs the same set of files as "make install" except it
doesn't create the hard link to "python<version>" named "python" and
it doesn't install the manual page at all.
If you want to install multiple versions of Python see the section below
entitled "Installing multiple versions".
The only thing you may have to install manually is the Python mode for
Emacs found in Misc/python-mode.el. (But then again, more recent
@ -988,6 +982,25 @@ installs the Python executable in a place that is not normally on your
PATH, you may want to set up a symlink in /usr/local/bin.
Installing multiple versions
----------------------------
On Unix and Mac systems if you intend to install multiple versions of Python
using the same installation prefix (--prefix argument to the configure
script) you must take care that your primary python executable is not
overwritten by the installation of a different versio. All files and
directories installed using "make altinstall" contain the major and minor
version and can thus live side-by-side. "make install" also creates
${prefix}/bin/python which refers to ${prefix}/bin/pythonX.Y. If you intend
to install multiple versions using the same prefix you must decide which
version (if any) is your "primary" version. Install that version using
"make install". Install all other versions using "make altinstall".
For example, if you want to install Python 2.5, 2.6 and 3.0 with 2.6 being
the primary version, you would execute "make install" in your 2.6 build
directory and "make altinstall" in the others.
Configuration options and variables
-----------------------------------