[IPython-user] A bag of pythons on OS X leopard; Is a house cleaning in order.

[Gary Church]

Hello all,

This is more of a python related question rather than an ipython  
question but I hope you won't chastise me for asking it here :-)

I'm starting to learn python on my macbook pro running OS X leopard.  
I've been having problems with ipython (see a previous mail) and have  
many pythons running about on my system. In particular:

1. Apparently I have python that came packaged along with OS X leopard.
2. I've installed some packages using fink that, I believe, also  
installed a python.
3. I've installed "sage" (a symbolic math package akin to Mathematica  
or Maple) which, evidently, comes with a python.
4. I've installed parts of MacPython 2.5 following instructions at: http://wiki.python.org/moin/MacPython/Leopard
5. Upon recommendation form a kind list subscriber, I've installed the  
python2.6 package for OS X found at: http://www.python.org/download/releases/2.6/

Even though I've installed all these packages, when I start python I  
still get python 2.5 (see below)

	Macintosh-4:~ gary$ python
	Python 2.5.2 (r252:60911, Jun  1 2008, 15:00:48)
	[GCC 4.0.1 (Apple Inc. build 5465)] on darwin
	Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
	>>> import sys
	>>> print sys.path
	['', '/sw/lib/python25.zip', '/sw/lib/python2.5', '/sw/lib/python2.5/ 
plat-darwin', '/sw/lib/python2.5/plat-mac', 				'/sw/lib/python2.5/ 
plat-mac/lib-scriptpackages', '/sw/lib/python2.5/lib-tk', '/sw/lib/ 
python2.5/lib-dynload',
	'/sw/lib/python2.5/site-packages', '/sw/lib/python2.5/site-packages/ 
Numeric',
	'/sw/lib/python2.5/site-packages/gtk-	2.0']
	>>>

My questions are:

1. How do I get python 2.6 to come up when I enter "python" at the  
terminal command line?
2. Should I "clean house" of all other pythons on the system and if  
so, how is that done?
3. Do these other pythons interfere with each other in some way? Is it  
a problem having all these pythons slithering around on my system?

Thanks for any help you can offer,
Gary

Gary Church
gary.church1@comcast.net