Deprecated: Virtualenv is now used for the general install instructions. See Amara/Install
One way to use Amara 2.x without interfering with your existing libraries (including Amara 1.x) is use virtualenv. You should be able to easy_install virtualenv. Create a directory for the sandbox, and set that directory as $AKARAHOME.
export AKARAHOME=$HOME/Library/Akara
mkdir $AKARAHOME
Then to set up the sandbox:
#The following is only needed once
virtualenv --no-site-packages $AKARAHOME #
source $AKARAHOME/bin/activate
You now have a subshell with a clean Python slate, and you can install Amara2 here:
mkdir $AKARAHOME/src
cd $AKARAHOME/src
hg clone http://bitbucket.org/uche/amara/ amara # You can also clone from http://hg.xml3k.org/amara
cd amara
python setup.py install
cd $AKARAHOME #Do not import/run Amara from its source dir
Then each time you want to go back to the sandbox:
cd $AKARAHOME
source $AKARAHOME/bin/activate
Then start experimenting
python -c "import amara;doc=amara.parse('<a/>');print doc.xml_first_child.xml_qname"
To get updates as they come, change to the Amara directory and...
cd $AKARAHOME/src/amara
hg pull; hg up
python setup.py install
cd $AKARAHOME #Do not import/run Amara from its source dir