Or, “Installing Python 2.7 via Homebrew”.
While Snow Leopard comes with a large number of UNIX utilities, those familiar with Linux systems will notice one key component missing: a package manager. Mxcl’s Homebrew is the answer.
To install Homebrew, simply run:
$ ruby -e "$(curl -fsS http://gist.github.com/raw/323731/install_homebrew.rb)"
It’s basic commands are update, install, and remove.
And we can now install Python 2.7:
$ brew install python --framework
The --framework option tells Homebrew to compile a Framework-style Python build, rather than a UNIX-style build. The outdated version of Python that Snow Leopard comes packaged with is built as a Framework, so this helps avoid some future module installation bugs.
Don’t forget to update your environment PATH.
Distribute is a fantastic drop-in replacement for easy_install and setuptools. It allows you to install and manage python packages from pypi.python.org, amongst a few other sources. It also plays well with virtualenv and user-enviornments.
easy_install is considered by many to be a deprecated system, so we will install it’s replacement: pip. Pip allows for uninstallation of packages, and is actively maintained, unlike setuptool’s easy_install.
To install pip and Distribute’s easy_install:
If you have homebrew:
$ brew install pip
...And, if you’re a masochist:
$ curl -O http://python-distribute.org/distribute_setup.py
$ python distribute_setup.py
$ easy_install pip
To install pip:
Hopefully you’ll never have to use easy_install again.
Distribute is a fantastic drop-in replacement for easy_install and setuptools. It allows you to install and manage python packages from PyPi, amongst a few other sources.
Make sure that `C:\Python27\`, and `C:\Python27\Scripts` are in your PATH.
easy_install is considered by many to be a deprecated system, so we will install it’s replacement: pip. Pip allows for uninstallation of packages, and is actively maintained, unlike setuptool’s easy_install.
To install pip, simply run:
$ easy_install pip
Oneiric Ocelot, the latest version of Ubuntu, comes with Python 2.7 out of the box. Python 3.2 can be installed and run with the following commands:
$ sudo apt-get install python3-minimal
$ python3
Older versions of Python aren’t available from the official repository. However, if it’s needed (for example to support legacy code), we can add an unsupported repository and install an older version of Python (2.5 in the example below):
$ sudo apt-get install python-software-properties
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:fkrull/deadsnakes
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install python2.5
While Python has an extensive standard library, the set of packages available from the Internet is even more extensive. In order to install them easily, we’ll install the setuptools package and pip installer:
.. XXX: sudo?
$ wget http://python-distribute.org/distribute_setup.py $ python distribute_setup.py $ wget https://raw.github.com/pypa/pip/master/contrib/get-pip.py $ python get-pip.py $ rm get-pip.py distribute_setup.py
Now, most Python packages can be installed using the pip command. For example, if we wanted to install Django:
$ sudo pip install django
A full list of pip‘s capabilities is available by typing pip --help.
While your system will quite likely already have Python installation, you might wish to install a different version. This is done in the typical Linux software source install procedure:
$ wget http://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.7.2/Python-2.7.2.tgz
$ tar -xvf Python-2.7.2.tgz
$ cd Python-2.7.2
$ ./configure
$ make
$ make install