How do I update a Python package?

I'm running Ubuntu 9:10 and a package called M2Crypto is installed (version is 0.19.1). I need to download, build and install the latest version of the M2Crypto package (0.20.2).

The 0.19.1 package has files in a number of locations including (/usr/share/pyshared and /usr/lib/pymodules.python2.6).

How can I completely uninstall version 0.19.1 from my system before installing 0.20.2?

The best way I've found is to run this command from terminal

sudo pip install [package_name] --upgrade

sudo will ask to enter your root password to confirm the action.

Note: Some users may have pip3 installed instead. In that case, use

sudo pip3 install [package_name] --upgrade

You might want to look into a Python package manager like pip. If you don't want to use a Python package manager, you should be able to download M2Crypto and build/compile/install over the old installation.

To automatically upgrade all the outdated packages (that were installed using pip), just run the script bellow,

pip install $(pip list --outdated | awk '{ print $1 }') --upgrade

Here, pip list --outdated will list all the out dated packages and then we pipe it to awk, so it will print only the names. Then, the $(...) will make it a variable and then, everything is done auto matically. Make sure you have the permissions. (Just put sudo before pip if you're confused) I would write a script named, pip-upgrade The code is bellow,

#!/bin/bash
sudo pip install $(pip list --outdated | awk '{ print $1 }') --upgrade

Then use the following lines of script to prepare it:

sudo chmod +x pip-upgrade
sudo cp pip-upgrade /usr/bin/

Then, just hit pip-upgrade and voila!