Building Python2.5 for Ubuntu 11.04

I run a few appengine instances and so I was quite disappointed after upgrading to Ubuntu 11.04 to find no pre-packaged versions of python2.5 (the version on which appengine is currently based). Python 2.7 is not compatible with various parts of the appengine dev server. After a bit of playing around this is the easiest way I found to get everything working that I needed. YMMV.

edit the top of dev_appengine.py and replace

#!/usr/bin/env python

with

#!/usr/bin/env python2.6

Python 2.6 is not ideal but it seems to do the job. If you want to go the extra mile (as I did) and install Python 2.5.5, you need to manually add ssl and address some bad assumptions python makes about sqlite3's library locations...

1. apt-get install libssl-dev libsqlite3-dev.
2. Edit Modules/Setup.dist and uncomment the _ssl and zlib lines.
3. Edit setup.py and modify it to look like this:
   

   sqlite_dirs_to_check = [
   os.path.join(sqlite_incdir, '..', 'lib64'),
   os.path.join(sqlite_incdir, '..', 'lib'),
   os.path.join(sqlite_incdir, '..', 'lib', 'x86_64-linux-gnu'),
   os.path.join(sqlite_incdir, '..', '..', 'lib64'),
   os.path.join(sqlite_incdir, '..', '..', 'lib'),
   os.path.join(sqlite_incdir, '..', '..', 'lib', 'x86_64-linux-gnu'),
   ]

   
   
4. make clean && ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/python2.5 && make
5. sudo make install
6. ln -s /usr/local/python2.5/bin/python2.5 /usr/bin
7. Change dev_appengine.py to refer to python2.5

Good luck!