On Ubuntu, how do you install a newer version of python and keep the older python version?

Posted by Trevor Boyd Smith on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Trevor Boyd Smith
Published on 2010-06-16T03:18:12Z Indexed on 2010/06/16 3:22 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 370

Filed under:

python

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installation

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gnu

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configure

Background:

I am using Ubuntu
The newer python version is not in the apt-get repository (or synaptic)
I plan on keeping the old version as the default python when you call "python" from the command line
I plan on calling the new python using pythonX.X (X.X is the new version).

Given the background, how do you install a newer version of python and keep the older python version?

I have downloaded from python.org the "install from source" *.tgz package. The readme is pretty simple and says "execute three commands: ./configure; make; make test; sudo make install;"

If I do the above commands, will the installation overwrite the old version of python I have (I definitely need the old version)?

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