CentOS 7.x Custom Python 3.7, 3.8, 3.9 & 3.10 RPM Builds For CentOS 7

CentOS 7 by default uses Python 2.7 and has side by side install support up to Python 3.6 via YUM repository RPM packages. For Python 3.7 and higher, you'd need to source compile and that can take quite some time ie. on a dedicated Intel Core i7 4790K 4.2+ GHz server it would take between 15-20 minutes to compile.

Recently, while installing fonttools for Xenforo usage, I came across fonttools Python minimum version requirements. For their latest fonttools v4.29, it required Python 3.7 this is because fonttools v4.28+ and higher switched to Python 3.7 minimum version requirement. If you install fonttools via Python 3.6, you will install fonttools v4.27.1. That's fine for Xenforo usage.

However, I asked myself what if a specific Python app/tool required Python 3.7? You can source compile as outlined on Centmin Mod blog article at CentOS 7 Python 2.7 Upgrade Deprecation Message - End Of Life January 1st, 2020 - Centmin Mod Blog and that should be fine for most folks.

But what if I created custom Python RPM builds for Python 3.7, 3.8, 3.9 and 3.10? So this is what I did as a test to see if it works as it should and so far looks good

Custom Python 3.7+ RPM Builds

The RPMs will install to /opt/pythonXXX where XXX is version prefix like 3.7, 3.8, 3.9, 3.10 so as to not conflict with any other YUM/RPM based installs of Python. Best practices for Python versions other than Python 2.7 for CentOS 7, is to install your Python apps within Python virtual environments like outlined at CentOS 7 Python 2.7 Upgrade Deprecation Message - End Of Life January 1st, 2020 - Centmin Mod Blog.

---

These include the following versions:

• python 3.7.12
• python 3.8.12
• python 3.9.10
• python 3.10.2

Code (Text):

yum -q list centmin-python*
Installed                  Packages
centmin-python3.10.x86_64  3.10.2-1.el7  @/centmin-python3.10-3.10.2-1.el7.x86_64
centmin-python3.7.x86_64   3.7.12-1.el7  @/centmin-python3.7-3.7.12-1.el7.x86_64
centmin-python3.8.x86_64   3.8.12-1.el7  @/centmin-python3.8-3.8.12-1.el7.x86_64
centmin-python3.9.x86_64   3.9.10-1.el7  @/centmin-python3.9-3.9.10-1.el7.x86_64

Code (Text):

/opt/python3.7/bin/python3.7 --version
Python 3.7.12

/opt/python3.8/bin/python3.8 --version
Python 3.8.12

/opt/python3.9/bin/python3.9 --version
Python 3.9.10

/opt/python3.10/bin/python3.10 --version
Python 3.10.2

Python 3.7

Code (Text):

yum -q info centmin-python3.7-3.7.12
Installed Packages
Name        : centmin-python3.7
Arch        : x86_64
Version     : 3.7.12
Release     : 1.el7
Size        : 182 M
Repo        : installed
From repo   : /centmin-python3.7-3.7.12-1.el7.x86_64
Summary     : python 3.7.12 for centminmod.com LEMP stack python 3.7.12
URL         : https://centminmod.com
License     : unknown
Description : python 3.7.12 for centminmod.com LEMP stacks

Code (Text):

rpm -ql centmin-python3.7-3.7.12 | grep '/bin/'
/opt/python3.7/bin/2to3-3.7
/opt/python3.7/bin/idle3.7
/opt/python3.7/bin/pydoc3.7
/opt/python3.7/bin/python3.7
/opt/python3.7/bin/python3.7m
/opt/python3.7/bin/python3.7m-config
/opt/python3.7/bin/pyvenv-3.7

python 3.7 virtual environment example for installing fonttools

Code (Text):

python_ver=3.7.12
python_prefixver=$(echo $python_ver | cut -d . -f1,2)
project_name=project1
mkdir -p /home/python_projects/$project_name
/opt/python${python_prefixver}/bin/python${python_prefixver} -m venv /home/python_projects/$project_name
source /home/python_projects/$project_name/bin/activate

# pip doesn't like ccache so disable it
export CC='gcc'
export CXX="g++"

# pip needs a tmp directory that doesn't have noexec restrictions
mkdir -p /home/piptmp
chmod 1777 /home/piptmp
export TMPDIR=/home/piptmp

pip install -U pip
pip --version
python -m pip install fonttools --verbose --force
python -m pip install fonttools[woff] --verbose --force
updatedb
locate pyftsubset

Example output

Code (Text):

source /home/python_projects/$project_name/bin/activate

pip install -U pip
Collecting pip
  Downloading pip-22.0.3-py3-none-any.whl (2.1 MB)
    |████████████████████████████████| 2.1 MB 45.0 MB/s
Installing collected packages: pip
  Attempting uninstall: pip
   Found existing installation: pip 20.1.1
   Uninstalling pip-20.1.1:
     Successfully uninstalled pip-20.1.1
Successfully installed pip-22.0.3

pip --version
pip 22.0.3 from /home/python_projects/project1/lib/python3.7/site-packages/pip (python 3.7)

python -m pip install fonttools --verbose --force
Using pip 22.0.3 from /home/python_projects/project1/lib/python3.7/site-packages/pip (python 3.7)
Collecting fonttools
  Downloading fonttools-4.29.1-py3-none-any.whl (895 kB)
    ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 895.5/895.5 KB 69.6 MB/s eta 0:00:00
Installing collected packages: fonttools
  changing mode of /home/python_projects/project1/bin/fonttools to 755
  changing mode of /home/python_projects/project1/bin/pyftmerge to 755
  changing mode of /home/python_projects/project1/bin/pyftsubset to 755
  changing mode of /home/python_projects/project1/bin/ttx to 755
Successfully installed fonttools-4.29.1

python -m pip install fonttools[woff] --verbose --force
Using pip 22.0.3 from /home/python_projects/project1/lib/python3.7/site-packages/pip (python 3.7)
Collecting fonttools[woff]
  Using cached fonttools-4.29.1-py3-none-any.whl (895 kB)
Collecting zopfli>=0.1.4
  Downloading zopfli-0.1.9-cp37-cp37m-manylinux_2_5_x86_64.manylinux1_x86_64.whl (113 kB)
    ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 113.4/113.4 KB 40.2 MB/s eta 0:00:00
Collecting brotli>=1.0.1
  Downloading Brotli-1.0.9-cp37-cp37m-manylinux1_x86_64.whl (357 kB)
    ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 357.2/357.2 KB 68.9 MB/s eta 0:00:00
Installing collected packages: zopfli, brotli, fonttools
  Attempting uninstall: fonttools
   Found existing installation: fonttools 4.29.1
   Uninstalling fonttools-4.29.1:
     Removing file or directory /home/python_projects/project1/bin/fonttools
     Removing file or directory /home/python_projects/project1/bin/pyftmerge
     Removing file or directory /home/python_projects/project1/bin/pyftsubset
     Removing file or directory /home/python_projects/project1/bin/ttx
     Removing file or directory /home/python_projects/project1/lib/python3.7/site-packages/fontTools/
     Removing file or directory /home/python_projects/project1/lib/python3.7/site-packages/fonttools-4.29.1.dist-info/
     Removing file or directory /home/python_projects/project1/share/man/man1/
     Successfully uninstalled fonttools-4.29.1
  changing mode of /home/python_projects/project1/bin/fonttools to 755
  changing mode of /home/python_projects/project1/bin/pyftmerge to 755
  changing mode of /home/python_projects/project1/bin/pyftsubset to 755
  changing mode of /home/python_projects/project1/bin/ttx to 755
Successfully installed brotli-1.0.9 fonttools-4.29.1 zopfli-0.1.9

locate pyftsubset
/home/python_projects/project1/bin/pyftsubset

Directly calling python from virtual environment

Code (Text):

project_name=project1
/home/python_projects/${project_name}/bin/pip --version
pip 22.0.3 from /home/python_projects/project1/lib/python3.7/site-packages/pip (python 3.7)

/home/python_projects/${project_name}/bin/python --version
Python 3.7.12

Python 3.8

Code (Text):

yum -q info centmin-python3.8-3.8.12
Installed Packages
Name        : centmin-python3.8
Arch        : x86_64
Version     : 3.8.12
Release     : 1.el7
Size        : 234 M
Repo        : installed
From repo   : /centmin-python3.8-3.8.12-1.el7.x86_64
Summary     : python 3.8.12 for centminmod.com LEMP stack python 3.8.12
URL         : https://centminmod.com
License     : unknown
Description : python 3.8.12 for centminmod.com LEMP stacks

Code (Text):

rpm -ql centmin-python3.8-3.8.12 | grep '/bin/'
/opt/python3.8/bin/2to3-3.8
/opt/python3.8/bin/idle3.8
/opt/python3.8/bin/pip3.8
/opt/python3.8/bin/pydoc3.8
/opt/python3.8/bin/python3.8
/opt/python3.8/bin/python3.8-config

Python 3.9

Code (Text):

yum -q info centmin-python3.9-3.9.10
Installed Packages
Name        : centmin-python3.9
Arch        : x86_64
Version     : 3.9.10
Release     : 1.el7
Size        : 246 M
Repo        : installed
From repo   : /centmin-python3.9-3.9.10-1.el7.x86_64
Summary     : python 3.9.10 for centminmod.com LEMP stack python 3.9.10
URL         : https://centminmod.com
License     : unknown
Description : python 3.9.10 for centminmod.com LEMP stacks

Code (Text):

rpm -ql centmin-python3.9-3.9.10 | grep '/bin/'
/opt/python3.9/bin/2to3-3.9
/opt/python3.9/bin/idle3.9
/opt/python3.9/bin/pip3.9
/opt/python3.9/bin/pydoc3.9
/opt/python3.9/bin/python3.9
/opt/python3.9/bin/python3.9-config

Python 3.10

Requires OpenSSL 1.1.1 which CentOS 7 doesn't use. But Centmin Mod Nginx uses OpenSSL 1.1.1, so use that OpenSSL 1.1.1 version to build Python 3.10

Code (Text):

yum -q info centmin-python3.10-3.10.2
Installed Packages
Name        : centmin-python3.10
Arch        : x86_64
Version     : 3.10.2
Release     : 1.el7
Size        : 265 M
Repo        : installed
From repo   : /centmin-python3.10-3.10.2-1.el7.x86_64
Summary     : python 3.10.2 for centminmod.com LEMP stack python 3.10.2
URL         : https://centminmod.com
License     : unknown
Description : python 3.10.2 for centminmod.com LEMP stacks

Code (Text):

rpm -ql centmin-python3.10-3.10.2 | grep '/bin/'
/opt/python3.10/bin/2to3-3.10
/opt/python3.10/bin/idle3.10
/opt/python3.10/bin/pip3.10
/opt/python3.10/bin/pydoc3.10
/opt/python3.10/bin/python3.10
/opt/python3.10/bin/python3.10-config