Ok so clearly I'm a bit of a dunce.

Please correct me if I'm wrong:

copy pasting the directory structure from an already-working and compiled binary to a dev directory and appending that new location to the sys.path in python appears to yield me with a copy of armory command line that i can now mess around with.

So if I modify and tweak some things on this copy pasted OSX source, will it still work on linux? Intuitively I'd say yes, because it's python... but the whole compiling C++ throws me a bit and i'm not sure if whatever those "missing" files were from the git clone that only exist after compiling or taking from compiled versions... afraid they are machine-specific - am I overthinking things?

Also, are there any "gotchas" with dealing with armory to make sure i dont inadvertently destroy my blockchain? There's some code comments warning about accessing same wallet file, and suggestions to copy paste it and have 2 armories access separate wallet files, but what about the blockchain itself - is that safe to have a normal stock GUI app interact, and still have a dev version running on same machine? or do i need to make sure only 1 armory is ever running?

Sorry for all the questions....