How to install the interpreter

Download the Python Interpreter using the python packager.
Follow the installation instructions sent by email with the tar files.
This email provides instructions on how to download and extract the tar files into a directory which we will refer to as $ROOT in the following.
If this tar file contains the Python interpreter for a platform called $ARCHOSV, the python interpreter binary will be then located in ROOT/$ARCHOSV/bin.

Installing Python requires the following steps, we assume that $ROOT is the directory where you untar'ed the files.

define the PYTHONHOME environment variables
in the directory where you untar'ed the file:
setenv ROOT `pwd`
setenv PYTHONHOME $ROOT/share:$ROOT/$ARCHOSV

if you got the Tcl/Tk libraries
setenv TCL_LIBRARY $ROOT/tcl8.0.5/library
setenv TK_LIBRARY $ROOT/tk8.0.5/library

setup your LD_LIBRARY_PATH
if ( $?LD_LIBRARY_PATH ) then
setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH ${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}:$ROOT/$ARCHOSV/lib:$ROOT/$ARCHOSV/extralibs
else
setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH $ROOT/$ARCHOSV/lib:$ROOT/$ARCHOSV/extralibs
endif

finally create an alias for the python interpreter
alias python $ROOT/$ARCHOSV/bin/python

Alternatively you can create a link from a directory that is already in your path and pointing to the python binary:

ln -s $ROOT/$ARCHOSV/bin/python $DirInMyPath/python

We recommend adding these line to you .cshrc
After these steps you should be able to type python from any directory to start a Python interpreter

mgllab, February 2001, (mgltools@scripps.edu)