pythonz: a Python installation manager

It’s been a while since I haven’t posted anything around here, so it’s about time :–)

Today I’m releaseing pythonz a Python installation manager, which works for CPython, Stackless and PyPy.

It’s a fork of pythonbrew, with some features removed, some bugfixes and also some new features. The main goal of this project is to provide the a way for installing different Python interpreters. Just that. How to pick one and use it afterwards is out of the scope of the project, for that I recommend virtualenv + virtualenvwrapper.

Lets see it in action!

First lets install pythonz:

curl -kL https://raw.github.com/saghul/pythonz/master/pythonz-install | bash

Once pythonz is installed add the following line to your .bashrc:

[[ -s $HOME/.pythonz/etc/bashrc ]] && source $HOME/.pythonz/etc/bashrc

Also lets source it now in order to start using it:

source ~/.pythonz/etc/bashrc

Lets install some pythons!

pythonz install --type cpython --no-test 2.7.2
pythonz install --type stackless --no-test  2.7.2
pythonz install --type pypy --url https://bitbucket.org/pypy/pypy/downloads/pypy-1.8-osx64.tar.bz2 1.8

With the above commands you’ll get CPython 2.7.2, Stackless 2.7.2 and PyPy 1.8 installed on your system.

Note that PyPy is installed in binary form, so you’ll need to indicate the correct URL, matching the appropriate version for your architecture.

Now lets create some virtualenvs with these Python versions we just installed:

mkvirtualenv -p ~/.pythonz/pythons/CPython-2.7.2/bin/python cpython272
deactivate
mkvirtualenv -p ~/.pythonz/pythons/Stackless-2.7.2/bin/python stackless272
deactivate
mkvirtualenv -p ~/.pythonz/pythons/PyPy-1.8/bin/python pypy18
deactivate

In order to use one of our newly created virtualenvs we can now use workon and deactivate as usual:

saghul@hal:~$ workon pypy18
(pypy18)saghul@hal:~$ python
Python 2.7.2 (0e28b379d8b3, Feb 09 2012, 18:31:14)
[PyPy 1.8.0 with GCC 4.2.1] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
And now for something completely different: ``Therefore, specific information,
I was in an ideal context, I had to realize the faith''
>>>>
(pypy18)saghul@hal:~$ deactivate
saghul@hal:~$

Hope you enjoy using it as much as I do :–)

Get the source on GitHUb!

:wq