multipy -- Install multiple Python versions locally

multipy is a shell utility that helps you install and manage multiple local Python installations. It downloads source tarballs for the newest version of any Python X.Y, compiles the source, and installs everything under a single directory hierarchy. By default, the install location is ~/multipy.

distribute is also installed along with each Python version, as well as an activate script in the spirit of virtualenv, for easier shell integration.

multipy is a single shell script. It requires a POSIX compliant shell, wget, tar and gzip to download and extract source tarballs, and a compiler, development headers and libraries to compile Python. No existing Python installation is required. multipy should work on any Unix-like system that Python can be compiled on.

Python versions 2.4 and up can be installed (including all 3.x releases).

Usage

Install Python 2.7 and 3.2:

$ multipy install 2.7 3.2

Install all supported Python versions (2.4 and up):

$ multipy install all

List installed Python versions:

$ multipy list

Remove Python 2.7:

$ multipy remove 2.7

Use a custom installation directory:

$ multipy -b /path/to/somewhere install 3.2

Tweak PATH to "activate" the local Python 2.5:

$ . $(multipy activate 2.5)

After this, e.g. python and easy_install can be used without an absolute path. To leave this mode, use deactivate.

Show the directory where Python 3.1 has been installed:

$ multipy path 3.1
/home/you/multipy/pythons/3.1

Show help:

$ multipy -h

Here's a list of supported command line options:

-b BASEDIR   The base directory [default: ~/multipy]
-k           Keep temporary files and logs after installation
-n           Don't install distribute

Upon startup, multipy tries to source ~/.multipyrc and ~/.config/multipyrc. The following variables can be assigned in these files:

Assignment...     has the same effect as:

basedir=BASEDIR   -b BASEDIR
keep_tmp=1        -k
no_distribute=1   -n

Under the hood

By default, the top directory of the multipy is basedir=$HOME/multipy. This can be changed with the -b option or in the config files discussed in the last section.

When Python X.Y is installed, the following things happen:

• The source tarball of the newest release Python X.Y.Z is first downloaded to $basedir/sources. For example, when writing this, the newest version of Python 2.7 is 2.7.1. Installing older point releases is not supported.
• The source is then extracted to a temporary directory under $basedir/tmp and compiled. The result is installed to $basedir/pythons/X.Y/. This is the standard configure, make, make install procedure.
• The newest release of distribute is downloaded to $basedir/sources (if not already there). It's extracted to a directory under $basedir/tmp and python setup.py install is run with the Python version that was installed in the previous step.
• An activate script is installed to the bin/ directory of the Python installation.
• Finally, $basedir/tmp is removed (this can be disabled with the -k option).

If anything goes wrong, $basedir/tmp is left in place, and logs of each step are available as $basedir/tmp/*.log.

The source tarballs are left in the $basedir/sources directory for future use, but you can safely remove them if you want to free up some disk space.

Copyright

Copyright (C) 2011 Petri Lehtinen. Licensed under the MIT license.