macos - Multiple versions of Python on OS X Leopard

Question

I currently have multiple versions of Python installed on my Mac, the one that came with it, a version I downloaded recently from python.org, an older version used to run Zope locally and another version that Appengine is using. It's kind of a mess. Any recommendations of using one version of python to rule them all? How would I go about deleted older versions and linking all of my apps to a single install. Any Mac specific gotchas I should know about? Is this a dumb idea?

Answer 1

There's nothing inherently wrong with having multiple versions of Python around. Sometimes it's a necessity when using applications with version dependencies. Probably the biggest issue is dealing with site-package dependencies which may vary from app to app. Tools like virtualenv can help there. One thing you should not do is attempt to remove the Apple-supplied Python in /System/Library/Frameworks and linked to from /usr/bin/python. (Note the recent discussion of multiple versions here.)