Re: Frustrated trying to build beecrypt & rpm on a Debian system whereI'm not root

["Paul Johnson" <pauljohn32 gmail com>]

> That's probably because the rpm module is a Red Hat thing, not a
> Python thing. An RPM of Python 2.4 for a system with Python 2.3 on it
> probably doesn't include the rpm module because it's not generally
> needed outside the RH utilities, which all pretty much require that
> you use the version of python installed with the system (if for no
> other reason than that you get the non-standard modules that are
> installed with it).
>
> Not sure which way to advise you to go from here....
>

Thanks for your attention. I appreciate it.  I keep feeling like I'm
'this close' to fixing the problem and that my difficulty is so
fundamental/simple/ignorant that Python folks can't see what I'm
asking.

Let me try to ask this one more time.

In Perl, users can install modules in their home directories.  The
make command changes by adding PREFIX=$HOME/user_perl

or some such thing and then when you want to run a Perl program that
uses both modules from the /usr/lib/perl5 set and the user's set, you
can add a use lib command in the Perl program so it goes to look in
$HOME/user_perl when it can't find it in /usr/lib/perl5.  I think
there is also an environment way to set that path, but I don't
generally do it.

On This Debian system that has python installed (it has versions 2.2,
2.3, and 2.4), I want to take the same approach of building Python
modules for beecrypt and rpm and installing them in $HOME/packages and
then when I run the Python program, i want it to behave like Perl and
get modules from either place.

So far, I am able, I think, to force my beecrypt and rpm to build
against the python2.4 that is installed on the system.  I can install
them in $HOME/packages/lib/python2.4.

But I do not know the  magical incantation that will allow a python
2.4 program to run and use modules stored in $HOME.  From my reading,
I though that if I did this:

export PYTHONPATH=$HOME/packages/lib/python2.4:$PYTHONPATH

it would be sufficient.  But it seems not to be because a python2.4
program that runs does not look for modules in
$HOME/packages/lib/python2.4.

I'm surprised this doesn't come up more often.  In Perl, it gets
discussed all the time.

pj


-- 
Paul E. Johnson
Professor, Political Science
1541 Lilac Lane, Room 504
University of Kansas