Installing Python 2.5 on CentOS 5.0

I discovered that doing the above was harder than I was lead to believe. I found the following video on YouTube, which shows how to install Python 2.5 on CentOS 5. Pretty simple, right? Untar it, ./configure, make install, moving the old /usr/bin/python, [symbolic] linking /usr/loca/bin/python to /usr/bin/python, all pretty standard. What I then discovered was that yum was broken - turns out it uses Python 2.4.3.

Remedying this is actually pretty simple. All you need to do is configure yum to run the right version of Python. It should already be in place (/usr/bin/python2.4). If not, move the current python there. Edit yum(/usr/bin/yum) to use python2.4. Then, install Python 2.5, according to the video above. Tada!

Roughly, the commands:

1. mv /usr/bin/python /usr/bin/python2.4
2. vi /usr/bin/yum (assuming you use vi). Change the first line to read #!/usr/bin/python2.4
3. Assuming you're in the Python 2.5 directory, you would run ./configure, then make, then make install.
4. ln -s /usr/local/bin/python /usr/bin/python

You now have Python 2.5 installed as the default Python, and yum is using Python 2.4. Whipee!