CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonpython-3.xpython-2.7anaconda
Anonny
Anonny

Reputation: 481

How many different macOS system default versions of Python should live on Mac?

I am super frustrated by the different versions of Python on my Mac. Is it usual that I have this many different system python versions? I'm wondering how can I manage them efficiently. 

$ which -a python python2 python2.7 python3 python3.6
/Users/anonymous/anaconda3/bin/python
/usr/local/opt/python/libexec/bin/python
/usr/bin/python
/usr/bin/python2.7
/Users/anonymous/anaconda3/bin/python3
/usr/local/bin/python3
/usr/local/bin/python3.6

/usr/bin/python and /usr/bin/python2.7 appear to give the same system version of Python 2.7:

Python 2.7.10 (default, Aug 17 2018, 17:41:52) 
[GCC 4.2.1 Compatible Apple LLVM 10.0.0 (clang-1000.0.42)] on darwin

/usr/local/bin/python3, /usr/local/bin/python3.6 and /Users/anonymous/anaconda3/bin/python appear to give the same system version of Python 3.6:

Python 3.6.5 (default, Mar 30 2018, 06:41:49) 
[GCC 4.2.1 Compatible Apple LLVM 8.0.0 (clang-800.0.42.1)] on darwin

/Users/anonymous/anaconda3/bin/python and /Users/anonymous/anaconda3/bin/python3 appear to give the same Anaconda version of Python 3.7:

Python 3.7.0 (default, Jun 28 2018, 07:39:16) 
[Clang 4.0.1 (tags/RELEASE_401/final)] :: Anaconda, Inc. on darwin

So I am wondering are there really several installations of the same version of Python? and is this what it is supposed to be? If not, what should I do to remove the redundancies? Thanks!

Upvotes: 2

Views: 1020

Answers (1)

jamie
jamie

Reputation: 84

Some of these refer to the same executable. On most systems, python is symlinked to either python2 or python3 in the same directory and then those are symlinked to a specific binary for that version such as python2.7 or python3.7. As for the ones in the anaconda3 folder, the user anonymous appears to have installed the Anaconda Python distribution in their home directory. Anaconda is standalone, and can be used instead of or addition to the system python typically. That can be safely deleted if you are not using it for anything. The python in /usr/local/bin was most likely installed via either Homebrew or from source or a binary installer from python.org

Upvotes: 1

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