Install python for mac how to#
Install python for mac mac os x#

The solution is echo 'backend: TkAgg' > ~/. This has to to with the default backend of matplotlib, which macOS doesn’t really like.

Install python for mac mac os x#

The Mac OS X backend will not be able to function correctly if Python is not installed as a framework. The version shipped with OS X may be out of date from the official current Python release. The version of Python that ships with OS X is great for learning, but it’s not good for development. If you installed python on mac and tried to use matplotlib to make beautiful plots for your papers, you might get into this error RuntimeError: Python is not installed as a framework. These instructions document the installation of Python 3. Now, you only need to remember to install modules using this slightly different line: python -m pip install MODULENAME -userĭone! Enjoy python on your supercomputer. If you removed the standard Python installation of macOS, boot into the Recovery Partition. Note the –user flag, which is good if you can’t sudo (as it was for me on the Caltech supercomputer). Ideally you can restore whatever youve deleted from a backup.

Install python for mac how to#

So, how to get pip and install modules anyway? The python people have a script precisely for this: wget This was because I was on a supercomputer which already had a python distribution installed and I didn’t want to deal with the scipy dependancies (e.g. I recently got across the situation that I did not want to use a virtual environment.

You have created the box, but you’re still out of it. The virtual environment is physically located in ~/box. Again, if you screw something up, you can just delete the box and start again. You can have different boxes for different projects, or a single box for all your python stuff. Python’s virtual environments are kind of separate boxes, where you can install modules and packages locally.

The easiest way to safely install python on a MAC is homebrew. Homebrew installs a new version of python (by default the latest 2.x version available) and set is as default. I will also stay with python 2 for now, but see below for some info on python 3 (see also here for more). However, it is advisable to install a local distribution and do your scientific stuff from there… If you screw something up, you can just delete everything and your OS is safe. Most (if not all) unix systems already come with a python distribution installed. This is a step-by-step guide to the best way I found to install and use python for science, the easy (less hackable) way comes first, and the long way comes next. All sort of scientific algorithms are already there (written and debugged!), you just have to use them. Python is cool, especially if you a scientist.