Making python 3.3 default python 3 interpreter instead of 3.2

Question

So, to keep it simple. Ubuntu 12.10 has python 3.2 pre installed and it is linked to "python3". I downloaded python 3.3 and it's command is "python3.3". However, I downloaded pySide for python3 from synaptic. Using "from PySide.QtCore import *" fails on python3.3. BUT, when I ran just "python3" (aka 3.2) everything works fine. Synaptic just installed lib for python3.2 which is default for python3 in ubuntu. How can I force synaptic to install modules for python3.3?

Thanks

Solution 1

You can custom your python3 alias. For this, you can modify your .bashrc file by appending "alias python3='python3.3'" at the end of it. This shell script can do it for you :

#!/bin/bash

cd ~

# Create the ~/.bashrc file if it does not exist
if [ ! -f ./.bashrc ]; then
    touch .bashrc
    chmod 755 .bashrc
    echo "#!/bin/bash" >> .bashrc
fi

# Append the customed alias
echo " " >> .bashrc
echo "alias python3='python3.3'" >> .bashrc
echo " " >> .bashrc

# Reload settings in the .bashrc script
source .bashrc

Solution 2

You may run different python versions on the same system by setting up the appropriate environment variables. This would allow you to locally install a later version of Python than the synaptic package manager might offer. e.g. in a file (mysetup) have:

TK_LIBRARY=/usr/lib/python2.7/lib-tk:/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/PIL:/usr/lib   
TKPATH=/usr/lib/python2.7/lib-tk:/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/PIL:/usr/lib 
TCL_LIBRARY=/usr/lib 
export TCL_LIBRARY TK_LIBRARY TKKPATH   

export PYTHONPATH=/usr/lib/python2.7/lib-tk:/usr/lib/python2.7/lib-stdwin:/usr/lib/python2.7/lib-dynload:/usr/lib:.     

and put them into your environment with . mysetup

Comments

[user1873947]

Thanks. This will make installing modules from synaptic to python3.3 dir, yes?

[user1873947]

Well, this indeed makes "python3" run "python3.3", but after installing python3 module from synaptic, it still installs only to python 3.2... There must be some magic with symlinks to 3.3 location.

[ssb]

I'm having the same issue, trying to download packages but they default to the wrong installation