python3.7 on modern alpine linux

Question

I need cpython 3.7 in alpine linux 3.13. I cannot find any way to install it or build it.

I have to have python3.8 (the standard from the repos) installed as well. I only need python3.7 in order to create python3.7 pyc files. Attempting to manually add the alpine v3.10 python3 package apk fails because it cannot find deps. Using "--force-broken-world" results in python3.8 being uninstalled along with all its dependents.

Trying to build from source, I just get "compiler cannot create executables" when running configure. Clang is installed. "export CC=/usr/bin/clang" has no effect.

Answer 1

I tried using the APKBUILD script from alpine aports. Configure still wasn't working. I figured out that I needed to install g++, ie. the gcc package wasn't enough.

apk add g++

Then configure worked. And abuild build was able to finish.

I also figured out that apk files are just tar.gz files with some extra metadata. Extracting it manually works fine to force an install.