However, I longed for more. Pylons more. It’s a lot of packages to install, so I really didn’t want to do it by hand. If I resign to do it this time, it will happen on my next coding whim too. I tried to use ez_setup, but it would screw up with my prefix. Tried virtual python from the easy_install guys, no go either. Tried messing with PYTHONPATH, PATH and the like, but it became really ugly really fast.

Bluehost’s python is very old. Has a big beard and all. Bluehost already forces me to use cgi after all, so i get to choose who runs the script. It might as well be my own version of python. And so it was! Grabbed the source, built it with a prefix and, lo and behold, I had a shiny python working. That simple. The night before it was configuration madness. This time, ./configure --PREFIX=$HOME/local && make && make install or some cash equivalent operation. All went good from there.

Lesson learned: In shared hosting, when forced to use cgi, ./configure --PREFIX=$HOME/local goes a long way. Use it!