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Can't find Python when building Qt from sources

We are trying to build the last version of Qt ( qt-15.5.0 ) from the sources on Ubuntu 20.04. Everything is running fine until we get the following error:
Project ERROR: Building QtQml requires Python.
Python is avalaible ( version 3.8 ), we even tried alias python=python3 and adding the path to python to $PATH but it didn't help. We can't find any info on this specific problem.
What we did:
$ wget http://download.qt.io/official_releases/qt/5.15/5.15.0/single/qt-everywhere-src-5.15.0.tar.xz
$ ./configure -prefix /username/dev/libraries/qt-5.15.0/install -xcb
$ make -j8
$ sudo make install

Whilst manually setting the alias is a quick workaround, and it helps in many cases, this solution is less useful when dealing with systems that are managed in an automated fashion.
In order to come around this issue, in Ubuntu 22 at least there is a meta-package available, which solves the issue:
sudo apt install python-is-python3
Other distros may possibly have similar solutions readily available.

$ vi .bashrc
Add the following alias to the .bashrc file.
alias python=python3
Save it and source the script.
$ source .bashrc
If it didn't work, use
$ which python3
/usr/bin/python3
$ sudo cp /usr/bin/python3 /usr/bin/python
Then you are ready to build your Qt!

How do I replace a Python installed from source with a packaged version?

As Python 3.7 was being prepared I installed Python 3.7.0b3 from source. Now 3.7 is out and I want to use the version packaged for Ubuntu. So I've done
apt-get install python3.7
but
$ which python3.7
/usr/local/bin/python3.7
$ /usr/local/bin/python3.7 --version
Python 3.7.0b3
How does one uninstall a Python installed from source (on Ubuntu)?
Or how can I replace it with the apt repo packaged version?

Since you opened a bounty, I can't vote to close as a duplicate, but this question would seem to provide a possible solution. Quoting from the accepted answer:
You can use checkinstall to remove Python. The idea is:
Install checkinstall
Use
checkinstall to make a deb of your
Python installation
Use dpkg -r to
remove the deb.
checkinstall basically wraps a make install command and creates a Debian .deb package based on what was installed. Then, you can just uninstall that package to reverse make install completely. To be perfectly safe you may want to uninstall the packaged Python 3.7 first and reinstall it afterwards to avoid any conflicts (I wouldn't expect any, though, since the packaged version lives in /usr while your source version lives in /usr/local).
If you don't have your source files around anymore, you can always download them again (https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-370b3/) and rebuild Python. Specifically, the checkinstall commands would look something like this:
sudo apt install checkinstall
wget https://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.7.0/Python-3.7.0b3.tgz
tar xf Python-3.7.0b3.tgz
cd Python-3.7.0b3
./configure && make
sudo checkinstall -D --fstrans=no make install
sudo dpkg -r Python-3.7.0b3.deb
(-D creates a Debian package, --fstrans=no disables use of a temporary directory for installation).

Since I was also moving to python 3.7, I came across this question and decided to answer it, as well as finish my installation.
This are the two sources, which I used for installing python 3.7 on ubuntu 16.04:
https://askubuntu.com/questions/865554/how-do-i-install-python-3-6-using-apt-get
https://superuser.com/questions/241865/updating-python-on-ubuntu-system
Apparently from the first source the deadsnakes PPA contain Python 3.7 - Link: https://github.com/deadsnakes/python3.7/tree/ubuntu/xenial/Python
So following from my first source, I used the following commands to install Python 3.7:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:deadsnakes/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install python3.7
It installed Python 3.7 successfully but my Python 3.5.2 remains default. You can invoke/use Python 3.7 by running the commands:
python3.7 script.py
It works, so I decided to set Python 3.7 as default by removing python 3.5, but I came across my second source, and just decided to stick with using python3.7, when running my script in the terminal.
Apparently it says:
Ubuntu policies extensively for writing end-user software. So basically, a large part of the system is written in Python. To switch to Python 3.7, there needs to be done a piece of work consisting of updating and re-testing all the scripts.
So to say you can't just switch to Python 3.7 and delete the older version.
Also from a comment from my first source it states deleting the older version might break the system. I haven't been around to deleting my older version in case it might break the system, but since you are asking for how to download Python 3.7, I think my first source and the first part of my answer should to the work.
I hope it helps :)

It seems that your Python built from source is under /usr/local, and your PATH variable has /usr/local/bin before /usr/bin, since running python3.7 gets you the one under /usr/local rather than the packaged one which would be /usr/bin/python3.7.
Look at your PATH to verify this.
echo $PATH
(When you run a program in bash, that particular running bash instance will remember the location and not rescan the directories in the PATH for that program again, so it will not notice a new file that has appeared somewhere earlier in the PATH. You can prevent this by running hash -r to reset the cache or by just exiting the shell and launching it again.)
I presume your goal is for python3.7 (or any of the other commands provided by Python) to run the versions from your packaged install in /usr.
Unfortunately the python build process does not provide an uninstall method -- the only automated way to remove just the files installed by a source Python install requires using other tools ahead of time (such as checkinstall).
So you have some choices :
Change your PATH so that /usr/local/bin is after /usr/bin. To do this, edit your ~/.profile file or whatever other script you have configuring your PATH and logout/login. This will also affect any other commands you run that are available in both /usr/local/bin and /usr/bin.
Remove /usr/local and reinstall anything else you want there. If a Python install is the only thing in your /usr/local, or if you can easily reinstall anything else you had there, this might be the way to go.
Painstakingly figure out what files under /usr/local/bin were part of Python and remove them. You might be able use the corresponding files in /usr/bin from your installed python3 packages as a starting point to figure out the similar names for /usr/local/bin.
One-liner to get the list of files in /usr/bin from installed python3* packages:
$ for pkg in $(dpkg -l 'python3*' | grep '^ii' | cut -f 3 -d' '); do dpkg -L $pkg | grep '^/usr/bin/'; done | sort
This should produce a list of files like:
/usr/bin/2to3-3.x
/usr/bin/chardet3
...
(I've tested this one-liner on Debian, I'm not sure if any changes are required for Ubuntu)

python update to 2.7.13 on centos

I'm new for linux and python ，yesterday I update my python from 2.6.6 to 2.7.13，but when i finished these command "./configure 、make、make install " ,then run "python“ ,I got "command not found ". thanks for help

I completely agree with the answer provided by #holdenweb. Just to add some more details considering for a tyro:
If you need access to a newer version of Python you must compile it yourself and install it side-by-side with the system version.
Here are the steps necessary to install Python 2.7. Execute all the commands below as root. Either log in as root temporarily or use sudo.
Install development tools
In order to compile Python you must first install the development tools:
The first one is :
yum groupinstall "Development tools"
You also need a few extra libraries installed before compiling Python or else you will run into problems later when trying to install various packages:
yum install zlib-devel bzip2-devel openssl-devel ncurses-devel sqlite-devel
Download, compile and install Python
The --no-check-certificate is optional
cd /opt
wget --no-check-certificate https://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.7.6/Python-
2.7.6.tar.xz
tar xf Python-2.7.6.tar.xz
cd Python-2.7.6
./configure --prefix=/usr/local
make && make altinstall
It is important to use altinstall instead of install, otherwise you will end up with two different versions of Python in the filesystem both named python.
After running the commands above your newly installed Python 2.7 interpreter will be available as /usr/local/bin/python2.7 and the system version of Python 2.6.6 will be available as /usr/bin/python and /usr/bin/python2.6.6.

Now Python is an essential component of many operating systems, the safest rule is leave the system's Python to the system, and don't modify it yourself. That way you can be sure you aren't going to interfere with any OS code that depends on a specific version of Python.
If you want some other version of Python to be your own default, install it somewhere like /usr/local/bin (the default installation for most Linux systems will put it there by default) and then put that directory at the front of your shell's PATH to ensure that the python command gets your version instead of the system's (which will remain as /usr/bin/python).
I would recommend that you re-link /usr/bin/python to point to /usr/bin/python2.6 and then the PATH adjustment mentioned above (but in your case adding /usr/local/python2.7.13/bin, which is where you seem to have installed your updated Python) should be all you need to do.

pip installs packages successfully, but executables not found from command line

I am working on mac OS X Yosemite, version 10.10.3.
I installed python2.7 and pip using macport as done in
http://johnlaudun.org/20150512-installing-and-setting-pip-with-macports/
I can successfully install packages and import them inside my python environment and python scripts. However any executable associated with a package that can be called from the command line in the terminal are not found.
Does anyone know what might be wrong? (More details below)
For example while installing a package called "rosdep" as instructed in http://wiki.ros.org/jade/Installation/Source
I can run: sudo pip install -U rosdep
which installs without errors and corresponding files are located in /opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages
However if I try to run : sudo rosdep init,
it gives an error : "sudo: rosdep: command not found"
This is not a package specific error. I get this for any package installed using pip on my computer. I even tried adding
/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages
to my $PATH.
But the executables are not found on the command line, even though the packages work perfectly from within python.

I know the question asks about macOS, but here is a solution for Linux users who arrive here via Google.
I was having the issue described in this question, having installed the pdfx package via pip.
When I ran it however, nothing...
pip list | grep pdfx
pdfx (1.3.0)
Yet:
which pdfx
pdfx not found
The problem on Linux is that pip install ... drops scripts into ~/.local/bin and this is not on the default Debian/Ubuntu $PATH.
Here's a GitHub issue going into more detail: https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/3813
To fix, just add ~/.local/bin to your $PATH, for example by adding the following line to your .bashrc file:
export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"
After that, restart your shell and things should work as expected.

Solution
Based on other answers, for linux and mac you can run the following:
echo "export PATH=\"`python3 -m site --user-base`/bin:\$PATH\"" >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc
instead of python3 you can use any other link to python version: python, python2.7, python3.6, python3.9, etc.
instead of .bashrc, choose the rc file from your favourite shell.
Explanation
In order to know where the user packages are installed in the current OS (win, mac, linux), we run:
python3 -m site --user-base
We know that the scripts go to the bin/ folder where the packages are installed.
So we concatenate the paths:
echo `python3 -m site --user-base`/bin
Then we export that to an environment variable.
export PATH=\"`python3 -m site --user-base`/bin:\$PATH\"
Finally, in order to avoid repeating the export command we add it to our .bashrc file and we run source to run the new changes, giving us the suggested solution mentioned at the beginning.

On macOS with the default python installation you need to add /Users/<you>/Library/Python/2.7/bin/ to your $PATH.
Add this to your .bash_profile:
export PATH="/Users/<you>/Library/Python/2.7/bin:$PATH"
That's where pip installs the executables.
Tip: For non-default python version which python to find the location of your python installation and replace that portion in the path above. (Thanks for the hint Sanket_Diwale)

check your $PATH
tox has a command line mode:
audrey:tests jluc$ pip list | grep tox
tox (2.3.1)
where is it?
(edit: the 2.7 stuff doesn't matter much here, sub in any 3.x and pip's behaving pretty much the same way)
audrey:tests jluc$ which tox
/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin/tox
and what's in my $PATH?
audrey:tests jluc$ echo $PATH
/opt/chefdk/bin:/opt/chefdk/embedded/bin:/opt/local/bin:..../opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin...
Notice the /opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin? That's what allows finding my pip-installed stuff
Now, to see where things are from Python, try doing this (substitute rosdep for tox).
$python
>>> import tox
>>> tox.__file__
that prints out:
'/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages/tox/__init__.pyc'
Now, cd to the directory right above lib in the above. Do you see a bin directory? Do you see rosdep in that bin? If so try adding the bin to your $PATH.
audrey:2.7 jluc$ cd /opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7
audrey:2.7 jluc$ ls -1
output:
Headers
Python
Resources
bin
include
lib
man
share

If you're installing using --user (e.g. pip3.6 install --user tmuxp), it is possible to get the platform-specific user install directory from Python itself using the site module. For example, on macOS:
$ python2.7 -m site --user-base
/Users/alexp/Library/Python/2.7
By appending /bin to this, we now have the path where package executables will be installed. We can dynamically populate the PATH in your shell's rc file based on the output; I'm using bash, but with any luck this is portable:
# Add Python bin directories to path
python3.6 -m site &> /dev/null && PATH="$PATH:`python3.6 -m site --user-base`/bin"
python2.7 -m site &> /dev/null && PATH="$PATH:`python2.7 -m site --user-base`/bin"
I use the precise Python versions to reduce the chance of the executables just "disappearing" when Python upgrades a minor version, e.g. from 3.5 to 3.6. They'll disappear because, as can be seen above, the user installation path may include the Python version. So while python3 could point to 3.5 or 3.6, python3.6 will always point to 3.6. This needs to be kept in mind when installing further packages, e.g. use pip3.6 over pip3.
If you don't mind the idea of packages disappearing, you can use python2 and python3 instead:
# Add Python bin directories to path
# Note: When Python is upgraded, packages may need to be re-installed
# or Python versions managed.
python3 -m site &> /dev/null && PATH="$PATH:`python3 -m site --user-base`/bin"
python2 -m site &> /dev/null && PATH="$PATH:`python2 -m site --user-base`/bin"

The Installing Packages tutorial on python.org describes how to locate the binary directory:
On Windows
You can find the user base binary directory by running
python -m site --user-site and replacing site-packages with Scripts.
For example, this could return
C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\Python36\site-packages so you
would need to set your PATH to include
C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\Python36\Scripts.
On Linux and macOS
On Linux and macOS you can find the user base binary directory by
running python -m site --user-base and adding bin to the end. For
example, this will typically print ~/.local (with ~ expanded to the
absolute path to your home directory) so you’ll need to add
~/.local/bin to your PATH.

I stumbled upon this question because I created, successfully built and published a PyPI Package, but couldn't execute it after installation. The $PATHvariable was correctly set.
In my case the problem was that I hadn't set the entry_pointin the setup.py file:
entry_points = {'console_scripts':
['YOUR_CONSOLE_COMMAND=MODULE_NAME.FILE_NAME:FUNCTION_NAME'],},

On Windows, you need to add the path %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Python\Scripts to your path.

Windows and Python 3.9 from MS Store
I have a different path with python -m site --user-base and python -m site - yes, the second command without --user-base to get all sites - as the other answers here state:
C:\Users\<your User>\AppData\Local\Packages\PythonSoftwareFoundation.Python.3.9_qbz5n2kfra8p0\LocalCache\local-packages\Python39\site-packages
Why is my path different
Because I installed python from MS Store
Solution
Put the above path in your path and replace site-packages with scripts

When you install Python or Python3 using MacOS installer (downloaded from Python website) - it adds an exporter to your ~/.profile script. All you need to do is just source it. Restarting all the terminals should also do the trick.
WARNING - I believe it's better to just use pip3 with Python3 - for future benefits.
If you already have Python3 installed, the following steps work for me on macOS Mojave:
Install ansible first using sudo - sudo -H pip3 install ansible
you create a symlink to the Python's bin path
sudo ln -s /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/Current/bin /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/current_python_bin
and staple it to .profile
export PATH=$PATH:/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/current_python_bin
run source ~/.profile and restart all terminal shells.
Type ansible --version

In addition to adding python's bin directory to $PATH variable, I also had to change the owner of that directory, to make it work. No idea why I wasn't the owner already.
chown -R ~/Library/Python/

I solve the problem!
Use pip3 instead pip.
pip3 install foobaz
vim ~/.zshrc and add:
export PATH="/Users/your_name/Library/Python/3.8/bin:$PATH"
source ~/.zshrc
Now MacOS has shifted the default terminal from bash to zsh. Therefore, you have to source zshrc but not bashrc or bash_profile.
foobaz -v

had the same issue with macOS Monterey. I had to modify my .bash_profile file and add the following entry
export PATH="~/Library/Python/3.8/bin:$PATH"
The default python version on macOS Monterey is 3.8, but you will have to double check your python version to make sure you're using the correct one

Unable to install Python without sudo access

I extracted, configured and used make for the installation package in my server.
However, I could not use make install. I get the error
[~/wepapps/python/Python-2.6.1]# make install
/usr/bin/install -c python /usr/local/bin/python2.6
/usr/bin/install: cannot create regular file `/usr/local/bin/python2.6': Permission denied
make: *** [altbininstall] Error 1
I run the folder with
chmod +x Python-2.6.1
I get still the same error.
How can I run make install without sudo access?

How can I install to a path under my home directory?
mkdir /home/masi/.local
cd Python-2.6.1
make clean
./configure --prefix=/home/masi/.local
make
make install
Then run using:
/home/masi/.local/bin/python
Similarly if you have scripts (eg. CGI) that require your own user version of Python you have to tell them explicitly:
#!/home/masi/.local/bin/python
instead of using the default system Python which “#!/usr/bin/env python” will choose.
You can alter your PATH setting to make just typing “python” from the console run that version, but it won't help for web apps being run under a different user.
If you compile something that links to Python (eg. mod_wsgi) you have to tell it where to find your Python or it will use the system one instead. This is often done something like:
./configure --prefix=/home/masi/.local --with-python=/home/masi/.local
For other setup.py-based extensions like MySQLdb you simply have to run the setup.py script with the correct version of Python:
/home/masi/.local/bin/python setup.py install

As of year 2020, pyenv is the best choice for installing Python without sudo permission, supposing the system has necessary build dependencies.
# Install pyenv
$ curl https://pyenv.run | bash
# Follow the instruction to modify ~/.bashrc
# Install the latest Python from source code
$ pyenv install 3.8.3
# Check installed Python versions
$ pyenv versions
# Switch Python version
$ pyenv global 3.8.3
# Check where Python is actually installed
$ pyenv prefix
/home/admin/.pyenv/versions/3.8.3
# Check the current Python version
$ python -V
Python 3.8.3

Extending bobince answer, there is an issue if you don't have the readline development package installed in your system, and you don't have root access.
When Python is compiled without readline, your arrow keys won't work in the interpreter. However, you can install the readline standalone package as follows: Adding Readline Functionality Without Recompiling Python
On the other hand, if you prefer to compile python using a local installation of readline, here's how.
Before doing as bobince was telling, compile and install readline. These are the steps to do so:
wget ftp://ftp.cwru.edu/pub/bash/readline-6.2.tar.gz
tar -zxvf readline-6.2.tar.gz
cd readline-6.2
./configure --with-prefix=$HOME/.local
make
make install
Then, add this line to your .bash_profile script:
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:$HOME/.local/lib
Last, but not least, execute the following command
export LDFLAGS="-L$HOME/.local"
I hope this helps someone!

You can't; not to /usr, anyway. Only superusers can write to those directories. Try installing Python to a path under your home directory instead.