How to Install pyenv

This guide shortly describes how to install the pyenv virtual environment manager. In addition, we will install pyenv-virtualenv. This is a pyenv plugin for creating and managing virtual Python environments.

pyenv is only officially supported on Linux/MacOS systems, so we will focus on these OS environments.

Prerequisites

Homebrew

This guide assumes that you have installed the homebrew package manager.

MacOS: Xcode dependencies

If not done yet, we need to install the Xcode dependencies:

Install Xcode dependencies

Xcode-select --install

Installing pyenv

Install pyenv using homebrew:

Install pyenv

brew upgrade
brew install pyenv

Install extra libraries:

Install extra libraries

brew install readline xz

Install virtualenv using homebrew:

Install pyenv-virtualenv

brew install pyenv-virtualenv

Getting Started

We can now use pyenv and pyenv-virtualenv. We start with installing a Python version.

The following command installs Python 3.11.7 in pyenv:

Install a Python Version

pyenv install 3.11.7

Since we want to keep the installed base Python version "clean2, we will create a new virtual environment, e.g. taking version 3.11.7 as a base version. The following command will create a virtual environment acme-3.11 that can be used later on:

Create a Virtual Environment

pyenv virtualenv 3.11.7 acme-3.11

We can now enable a virtual environment for the local directory:

Enable a virtual environment for the local directory

pyenv local acme-3.11