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For the last few days, I have been trying to use Python for some audio development.

The thing is, Mac OSX does not handle uninstalling stuff well. Actually, there is no way to uninstall anything. Once it is on your system, you better pray that it didn't do any funny stuff. Hence, I don't really want to rely on installer packages for Python.

So I turn to Homebrew and install Python using Homebrew. Works fabulously. Using pip, Numpy, SciPy, Matplotlib were no (big) problem, either. Now I want to play audio. There is a host of different packages out there, but pip does not seem willing to install any. But, there is a binary distribution for PyGame, which I guess should work with the built-in Python.

Hence my question: What would you do? Would you just install the binary distributions and hope that they interoperate well and never need uninstalling? Would you hack your way through whichever package control management system you prefer and deal with its problems? Something else?

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up vote 6 down vote accepted

Short answer: use virtualenv

Longer answer:

1) Leave system Python as is (don't touch at all)
2) Install different versions of Python via this buildout: https://github.com/collective/buildout.python
3) Use virtualenv for every project

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And use pip install inside the virtual environment. –  iJames Sep 24 '11 at 15:58
Also remember to do a "source bin/activate" and "deactivate" to turn on and off the "environment". –  iJames Sep 24 '11 at 16:00
The buildout URL is broken. I think the new URL is: github.com/collective/buildout.python –  MiniQuark Aug 7 '12 at 10:57
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