I came across this difficulty when I try to install ArangoDB. It comes with V8 Javascript engine from Google bundled in. Installing V8 requires Python 2, not Python 3 which is the default in my Arch Linux box.
Luckily, V8 uses "#/usr/bin/env python", not "#/usr/bin/python". To change this behaviour, all I have to do is just ask "env" to use my python2 interpreter. Here's how:
1. Create symlink to python2 under the name "python"
I put the symlink into my "$HOME/bin" directory.
2. Put into PATH
"~/bin" should preced $PATH because env use the first setting.
There you go!
[bpdp@bpdp-arch V8]$ ls `which python` lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 Apr 24 06:48 /usr/bin/python -> python3 [bpdp@bpdp-arch V8]$
Luckily, V8 uses "#/usr/bin/env python", not "#/usr/bin/python". To change this behaviour, all I have to do is just ask "env" to use my python2 interpreter. Here's how:
1. Create symlink to python2 under the name "python"
I put the symlink into my "$HOME/bin" directory.
$ cd ~/bin $ ln -s /usr/bin/python2 python
2. Put into PATH
$ export PATH=~/bin:$PATH
"~/bin" should preced $PATH because env use the first setting.
[bpdp@bpdp-arch arangodb]$ which python /home/bpdp/bin/python [bpdp@bpdp-arch arangodb]$ env python Python 2.7.3 (default, Apr 24 2012, 00:06:13) [GCC 4.7.0 20120414 (prerelease)] on linux2 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>>
There you go!
Change Python Interpreter Temporary (python3 -> python2)