Autotools - Use Python 2.7 when Python 3 is available

Question

I use Arch Linux. python --version returns Python 3.6.2, python2 --version (and python2.7 --version ) returns Python 2.7.13. Automake searches for a python newer than 2.4 and finds python (3.6). The project doesn't work with python 3, though. AM_PATH_PYTHON(<min-version>[,...]) doesn't allow one to specify a maximum version.

How can I have automake search for python2 if python is too new? Or is there a better way to deal with this problem? Automake should still find python if it's the correct version because this build needs to be able to run on distributions that have older packages (for instance, Ubuntu 14.04).

Answer 1

PYTHON由AM_PATH_PYTHON设置为一个宝贵的变量 ，你可以在配置时覆盖它的选择：

$ PYTHON=python2 ./configure

Answer 2

Until it's fixed upstream, I would do something like:

mkdir ~/autotools_bin/
ln -s /usr/bin/python2 ~/autotools_bin/python
export PATH="~/autotools_bin:$PATH"

Then it can only find python2 (named python) and your system isn't messed up, only processes you run with the changed PATH.