title: What are the cons of a parallel Python distro on *NIX?
body: <p>I've always been under the impression that one should avoid using the Python distro that comes with any *NIX flavor. (The first thing I do when I get a new laptop is insatll homebrew.) The pros in my mind are obvious--chiefly, I'm not completely comfortable with the idea that the code is linked to the OS when you do such a thing. Changing OSes (read: cloud providers) means that you now have to pray that the correct packages and versions exist, and seems to be a regression testing nightmare.</p>
  
  <p>But one of our system architects gave me reason for pause--I really respect his opinion (he's one of those salty pre-dot-com guys who's right about pretty much everything) and he mentioned that there were issues with reproducibility and security in these cases. I'm turning to SO because I'm now super curious (I've been stewing since Friday), and it's Sunday.</p>
  
  <p>So the question:</p>
  
  <p>What are the downsides of a parallel installation of Python in Linux? </p>
  
  <p>I'd like to use chef (or bash) to set the base Python distro up (with dependencies), and virtualenv/pip to manage packages. A bash script/wrapper will invoke the virtualenv. The code will run in production (in the ETLs for the data warehouse), so stability, reproducibility, and security are all important. Is this setup wrong/unstable/insecure in some way?</p>
  
  <hr>
  
  <p>slightly (un)related, possibly helpful to weary travelers:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li><a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7463530/how-to-deal-with-linux-python-dependencies">How to deal with Linux/Python dependencies?</a></li>
  </ul>