title: Installing node.js on CentOS 5
body: <p>I'm pretty new to CentOS (5) and also node.js, but I already got an older version of node.js to work on my virtual server. 
  Now I'm trying to install a newer version, and I know that CentOS needs Python 2.4 while node needs 2.6 or newer, so I installed Python 2.7 using altinstall.</p>
  
  <p>But even if I set an alias for Python that points to version 2.7 before running ./configure, I still get this error: </p>
  
  <pre><code>/root/node/wscript: error: Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "/root/node/tools/wafadmin/Utils.py", line 274, in load_module
      exec(compile(code, file_path, 'exec'), module.__dict__)
    File "/root/node/wscript", line 222
      "-pre" if node_is_release == "0" else ""
          ^
  SyntaxError: invalid syntax
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>That's the content of ./configure:</p>
  
  <pre><code>#! /bin/sh
  
  # v8 doesn't like ccache
  if [ ! -z "`echo $CC | grep ccache`" ]; then
    echo "Error: V8 doesn't like cache. Please set your CC env var to 'gcc'"
    echo "  (ba)sh: export CC=gcc"
    exit 1
  fi
  
  CUR_DIR=$PWD
  
  #possible relative path
  WORKINGDIR=`dirname $0`
  cd "$WORKINGDIR"
  #abs path
  WORKINGDIR=`pwd`
  cd "$CUR_DIR"
  
  "${WORKINGDIR}/tools/waf-light" --jobs=1 configure $*
  
  exit $?"
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>And at the top of wscript there is the following line: "#!/usr/bin/env python". I also tried replacing that with something else, though I think it should work when using a Python alias</p>
  
  <p>Any ideas what I need to do to get this to work?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks!</p>