Install Python using HomeBrew

HomeBrew is a popular Linux/MacOS package installer. We will use it to install python.

MacOS

TLDR

Download and install homebrew and install python

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"
brew install python
python3

Prerequisites

On MacOS Brew installs the software in /usr/local/Cellar/ and creates symlinks to the binaries in /usr/local/opt/ and /usr/local/bin/.

Install HomeBrew if you don’t have it as

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

The brew command will show in /usr/local/bin/brew, which should be part of the PATH. Install python running

brew install python

HomeBrew will install the latest python version, in my case 3.12. It also creates a link in /usr/local/bin/. To open a python prompt jus type python3.

If we take a close look and run ls -lhat /usr/local/bin | grep python3 we see that python3 is a link to /usr/local/Cellar/python@3.12/3.12.3/bin/python3 which in turn is a link to /usr/local/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.12/bin/python3. The real executable (and the path to the original installation) is the latter.

I always like to have an alias to python rather than python3. These days python2 has been deprecated and is not used in any modern project.

# append the command to the file ~/.zshrc
echo alias pytyon=/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.12/bin/python3 >> ~/.zshrc

Linux (Ubuntu Dist)

As prerequisites you need to have curl and git.

sudo apt-get update && apt-get install -y curl git

Then install HomeBrew as before

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

The binaries will be in /home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/bin, make sure you add this to your path in .zshrc or .bashrc

echo 'export PATH="$PATH:/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/bin"' >> ~/.zshrc

This bin is actually a symlink of the directory /home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/Homebrew/bin/ that contains the brew binary. Finally source the file so that changes make effect

# if you use zsh
source ~/.zshrc

# if you use bash
source ~/.bashrc

Now install python executing

brew install python

This automatically installst the latest python version, which, in my case, is 3.12. The binary can be found in /home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/bin/python3. This path has been previoulsy added to the PATH so we can go ahead and type in our terminal

# open a terminal in python.
python3

# same as before but specifying the version we just installed.
python3.12