python dependency hell?

[Michael Kimsal]

Just got an email from a friend who was looking to set up Django and was hitting dep hell:

From the email:

You can install 2.6 in parallel, but most of the yum python packages only work with 2.4.  There's also a fair amount of finessing to install the "pip" package manager to work with 2.6 instead of 2.4.  Then I've hit the issue of pycurl not being compatible with the openssl version on CentOS.  I've upgraded OpenSSL and Curl, but curl doesn’t pick up the new OpenSSL version.  I've tried compiling it by passing in the new path, adding it to .bash_profile and the ld.cong.conf file.  However I still get an error when importing pycurl on the python CLI.  There have also been a number of pip packages that wouldn't install without specific CentOS packages being  installed, though the error messages didn't always say so.

Question:

This is probably just a function of being on an older version of CentOS and trying to use those packages.  Are there other options for setting up and managing Python libs independent of the host OS packaging system?

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Michael Kimsal
http://michaelkimsal.com
919.827.4724