“except Error as e SyntaxError” when installing nodejs

Question

I've been trying to install nodejs on my VPS for a little while now. Since I'm using CentOs 5.6 I had to build it from source.
More so I need the python 2.7 as the default python on my box was 2.4.
I compiled python from source and it was installed successfully in /usr/local/bin/python2.7 .

Now the problem is upon issuing make in the nodejs directory it reaches the following exceptions.

.
.
.
  LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/root/node/out/Release/lib.host:/root/node/out/Release/lib.tar
get:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH; cd ../deps/v8/tools/gyp; mkdir -p
/root/node/out/Release/obj/gen; python ../../tools/generate-trig-table.py "/root
/node/out/Release/obj/gen/trig-table.cc"
  touch /root/node/out/Release/obj.host/deps/v8/tools/gyp/generate_trig_table.st
amp
  LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/root/node/out/Release/lib.host:/root/node/out/Release/lib.tar
get:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH; cd ../deps/v8/tools/gyp; mkdir -p
/root/node/out/Release/obj/gen; python ../../tools/js2c.py "/root/node/out/Relea
se/obj/gen/libraries.cc" CORE off ../../src/runtime.js ../../src/v8natives.js ..
/../src/array.js ../../src/string.js ../../src/uri.js ../../src/math.js ../../sr
c/messages.js ../../src/apinatives.js ../../src/debug-debugger.js ../../src/mirr
or-debugger.js ../../src/liveedit-debugger.js ../../src/date.js ../../src/json.j
s ../../src/regexp.js ../../src/arraybuffer.js ../../src/typedarray.js ../../src
/weak_collection.js ../../src/promise.js ../../src/object-observe.js ../../src/m
acros.py
  File "../../tools/js2c.py", line 387
    except Error as e:
                  ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
make[1]: *** [/root/node/out/Release/obj/gen/libraries.cc] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/root/node/out'
make: *** [node] Error 2

Somewhere I read that the Exception syntax has changed from python 2.6 up and I figured it must be using the old python so I did the following but it made no difference:

PYTHON=/usr/local/bin/python2.7
export PYTHON
python2.7 configure && make && make install

Now I'm wondering how should I proceed?

Answer 1

IMO you need to place python2.7 first in path and then run:

export PATH=/usr/local/bin:${PATH}
python2.7 configure && make && make install

If this does not work, probably one of the Python scripts is looking for python . You can probably fix that by symlinking python, something like:

mkdir /tmp/py27
ln -s /usr/local/bin/python2.7 /tmp/py27/python
export PATH=/tmp/py27:${PATH}
python configure && make && make install

Answer 2

Is all caps PYTHON a valid environment variable?

http://www.wellho.net/resources/ex.php4?item=y115/penv.py

I would think you would rather create a sym link to the correct python interpreter.

ln -s /usr/local/bin/python2.7 /usr/local/bin/python