CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonsys.path
ghoff
ghoff

Reputation: 331

Installing python into a portable, self-contained directory on the network

I need to install python 2.7 and 3.4 for linux/unix (built from source) into a directory on the network other than the location from which it will ultimately be used.

I.e. the directory containing the installation must be portable and self-contained.

Thus, it seems like things such as the "installation-dependent default" sys.path should be defined relative to the current location of the python installation.

However, --prefix and --exec_prefix require absolute paths.

For example: I might create the installation in "/stage/tools/python", then copy the "python" directory to "/tools/knights/ni". If I then invoke "/tools/knights/ni/$platform/bin/python", python should find everything it needs from its installation under "/tools/knights/ni/"

How can I do a portable, self-contained install?

Thanks much for any guidance.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 4129

Answers (1)

Krumelur
Krumelur

Reputation: 32497

You will probably not be able to do portable (as in: works across different OS versions, archs), but virtualenv can help you create self-contained installations.

Virtualenv has a --relocatable option that solves the case if the mountpoints differ, but it has issues according to the documentation, and I never used it. However, virtualenv is sort of a hack that forces Python to do something it was not designed to do (being moved to a self-contained directory) and you always end up shooting yourself in the foot with it.

What I would have preferred is to just do a pip freeze > requirements.txt to easily install all the dependencies. That, and/or Docker. If you need to patch Python itself or have a custom build configuration, I have preferred to just let the users do ./configure && make && make install themselves.

Upvotes: 1

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