Show CentOS version

$  uname -ri
2.6.18-398.el5 i386
$ cat /etc/*release
CentOS release 5.11 (Final)

Install “Develement Tools”

# yum -y groupinstall "Development Tools"

Download Gzipped source tarball

# mkdir $HOME/tmp
# cd $HOME/tmp
# wget https://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.7.11/Python-2.7.11.tgz
# tar xf Python-2.7.11.tgz
# cd Python-2.7.11
# ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/python2.7
# make
...
Python build finished, but the necessary bits to build these modules were not found:
_bsddb             _curses            _curses_panel   
_sqlite3           _ssl               _tkinter        
bsddb185           bz2                dbm             
gdbm               readline           sunaudiodev     
zlib

To install these modules,

  • bz2

      # yum -y install bzip2-devel

  • zlib

      # yum -y install zlib-devel

  • readline

      # yum -y install readline-devel

  • _sqlite3

      # yum -y install sqlite-devel

  • _tkinter

      # yum -y install tk-devel

  • _curses _curses_panel

      # yum -y install ncurses-devel

  • _bsddb

      # yum -y install db4-devel

  • gdbm

      # yum -y install gdbm-devel

  • _ssl

    With dist packages

      # yum -y install openssl-devel

    Make with source

      # wget https://www.openssl.org/source/openssl-1.0.2h.tar.gz
  # tar xf openssl-1.0.2h.tar.gz
  # cd openssl-1.0.2h
  # ./config --prefix=/usr shared
  # make install

Configure & Make install Python-2.7.11

You can also use --enable-shared option to build shared versions of libraries.

# cd $HOME/tmp/Python-2.7.11
# ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/python2.7
# make
...
Python build finished, but the necessary bits to build these modules were not found:
bsddb185           sunaudiodev                        
To find the necessary bits, look in setup.py in detect_modules() for the module's name.

running build_scripts
# make install

Add /usr/local/python2.7/lib/ to ld.so.conf,

If you use --enable-shared option, you should append python DSO to ld.so.conf.

# echo "/usr/local/python27/lib/" > /etc/ld.so.conf.d/python2.7-x86_64.conf

Install pip with get-pip.py

# cd $HOME/tmp
# wget https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py --no-check-certificate
# /usr/local/python2.7/bin/python get-pip.py

Install virtualenv

# /usr/local/python2.7/bin/pip install virtualenv

Create a virtualenv

$ export LC_ALL=C
$ /usr/local/python2.7/bin/virtualenv venv
$ source venv/bin/activate
$ python --version
Python 2.7.11