Installing Python on macOS with the official Python installer#

I usually use Homebrew on macOS, but I decided to try using the official Python installer based on this Twitter conversation.

My big fear was that it would add Yet Another Python to my system in a way that made the XKCD 1987 situation even worse!

I downloaded the installer using the prompt on the Python.org homepage (in the “Downloads” menu):

After running the installer and accepting the default options, a Python 3.10 folder was added to my /Applications folder:

More importantly though, running python3 in my terminal now runs the version of Python that was installed by the installer - which lives in /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/:

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~ % which python3
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/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.10/bin/python3
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~ % python3
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Python 3.10.2 (v3.10.2:a58ebcc701, Jan 13 2022, 14:50:16) [Clang 13.0.0 (clang-1300.0.29.30)] on darwin
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Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

I was confused as to how it had added itself to my path - a tip from Ned Deily (a Python release manager) helped me figure that out:

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~ % grep -d skip '3.10' ~/.*
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/Users/simon/.zprofile:# Setting PATH for Python 3.10
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/Users/simon/.zprofile:PATH="/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.10/bin:${PATH}"

So the installer added a line to my .zprofile file adding the bin directory for that release to my path.

Running python3.10 is the most specific way to execute that version of Python. I can install new command-line tools into that bin directory like so:

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% python3.10 -m pip install google-drive-to-sqlite
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Collecting google-drive-to-sqlite
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  Downloading google_drive_to_sqlite-0.4-py3-none-any.whl (20 kB)
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...
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% google-drive-to-sqlite --version
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google-drive-to-sqlite, version 0.4
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% which google-drive-to-sqlite
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/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.10/bin/google-drive-to-sqlite