How to install a second/third/python on my system?

Question

How can I install (on Linux) a plain Python distribution to e.g. /opt/myPythonProject/python? When I afterwards install packages (e.g. pip) all packages should go in /opt/myPythonProject. It should simply ignore system python and it's packages.

My ultimate goal is to place my own code in /opt/myPythonProject/mycode, then zip op the entire project root directory, to deploy it on customer machine. Does this in general work (assuming my own arch/OS/etc. is the same).

So the bigger question is: can I deliver python/packages/my own code in 1 big zip? If yes, what do I need to take into account?

If not: what is the easiest solution to distribute a Python application together with the runtimes/packages and to get this deployed as application user (non root).

Answer 1

Use python virtual environment. Follow the below commands.

pip install virtualenv
virtualenv <my-new-directory>
source <my-new-directory>/bin/activate
pip install <my-package-name>

By doing so all your packages gets installed in the folder:

<my-new-directory>/lib/python2.7/site-packages/

Answer 2

I've had a similar issue recently with how to distribute my Python program as a stand alone. I used Pyinstaller (http://www.pyinstaller.org/).

You can include other data files such as exes or images by adding their paths to the generated spec file. The documentation is pretty good at explaining it.

Answer 3

I use

• virtualenv for multiple Python installations
• setuptools for packaging (via pip)