Re: [gentoo-user] ARGH I uninstalled python

[Jorge Morais <please.no.spam.here@gmail.com>]

On Sat, 23 May 2009 03:51:40 -0700 (PDT)
Jon Hardcastle <jd_hardcastle@yahoo.com> wrote:

> > 
> > And finally, couldn't he have gotten a binary package from
> > http://tinderbox.dev.gentoo.org/default-linux/x86/dev-lang/
> > ?
Have you not yet tried to get python from a binary package?
See http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-4669397.html#4669397
That is both the easiest and cleanest solution I have found so far,
(not that I have researched much, I admit).
And maybe you don't even have to extract the tarball manually with
tar; maybe you can use qmerge from app-portage/portage-utils
(AFAIK it is written in C).

Now, I do have concerns about your system having remains of multiple
python installations.

Any person with python knowledge can give an opinion on whether this
is dangerous? And what is the easiest way to clean the mess?

One idea: you can can recompile python with a safe
prefix (such as a subdir of your home), issue make install (not as root,
for increased safety) and see where Python install its files relative to
the prefix, so you can delete them from your system
(to be more careful before deleting a file, you can issue
qfile <FILE> to see if it is owned by a portage-installed package.
And in the end you can emerge python properly, from the sources, so all
the ebuild logic (which is more than just ./configure, make and make install)
gets applied, and you get a Python installation that respects your USE flags,
CFLAGS and other system-specific settings (obviously you don't get such a
system-customized python when you use the binary package from tinderbox).