Using Enthought Python instead of the system Python

Question

I've installed the Enthought Python Distribution, which is basically a glorified Python distribution with added libraries for numerical and scientific computing. Now, since I use Debian, there is Python installed already. If I wish to use the Enthought Python for all work, how would I go about doing that?

Right now I am using a rudimentary alias like:

alias python='/usr/local/share/enthought/bin/python'

This is fine, but fails for shebang directives like #! /usr/bin/env python in independent Python scripts. So how do I get the system to use Enthought Python (without breaking anything of course!). Thanks!

Answer 1

I think this is the official way of doing it, as recommended by Enthought:

export PATH=/usr/local/EPD/bin:$PATH

if you installed to /usr/local/EPD. Otherwise, the general form is

export PATH=/path/to/EPD/bin:$PATH 

This prepends the path to the EPD binary directory to your system PATH variable. The : is some sort of concatenate symbol. You can either run this in terminal every time, or you can put this in your ~/.bashrc file.

---

Critical Edit:

It turns out that EPD should actually be appended to the PATH, or you may have OS problems. Do it like this:

 export PATH=$PATH:/path/to/EPD/bin