Can't uninstall manually installed python 2.7.5

Question

I manually installed python 2.7.5 using checkinstall. I downloaded and extracted the source tarball from python.org in /usr/local/src, then ran these commands

./configure
sudo make
sudo checkinstall

I wanted to upgrade from 2.7.4 to 2.7.5, I probably could have used apt-get to just install the next version, but now I want to uninstall it, I went to the ubuntu software center and tried to remove it, but it tells me that I need to remove all these other programs that depend on python even though I already have the python version that came with my installation. I'm not really sure how to uninstall it.

apt-cache policy python python2.7 outputs:

python:
  Installed: 2.7.5-1
  Candidate: 2.7.5-1
  Version table:
 *** 2.7.5-1 0
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     2.7.4-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ raring/main amd64 Packages
python2.7:
  Installed: 2.7.4-2ubuntu3
  Candidate: 2.7.4-2ubuntu3
  Version table:
 *** 2.7.4-2ubuntu3 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ raring/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

in /usr/local/src/Python2.7.5, there is a deb package called python_2.7.5-1_amd64.deb.

Answer 1

In your case you were very lucky to have used checkinstall! Instead of installing it bluntly by overwriting/moving files it created a package which got installed. This makes the package management aware of the installation and how to undo it. So, this means you can tell APT that you now want to install the other version:

Run

sudo apt-get install python=2.7.4-0ubuntu1

to revert to the regular Ubuntu packaged version. Python 2.7.5 will probably only be available in Saucy, not in the current stable releases.

This is not the same as removing and reinstalling, as in this case it gets downgraded taking care a single version of Ubuntu is installed at all times.