Developing on mac

Sketch of the steps to get up and running on a Mac to make binary releases for Python packages. This is my personal setup.

Here’s a remarkably helpful short page on distinctive things about doing system and development work with Mac OSX binaries : http://www.tribler.org/trac/wiki/MacBinaries

Basic setup

• Xcode, obviously;

• git - see the github osx installation;

• editor. I like vim - via MacVim;

• consider installing homebrew;

• For every Python version you want to support, download the “Mac installer disk image” dmg or pkg installer file via the links from the Python.org releases. Run the installation.

• Check in your ~/.bash_profile to see what version of Python will reach your path first. Adapt to taste. Python.org installs go in directories like /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7. You need this directory with /bin appended on your path.

• Install personal setup. This is what that looks like for me (I store my set up on github to make it easier to move between computers):

  git clone https://github.com/matthew-brett/myconfig.git
  cd myconfig
  make dotfiles
  cd ..
  

  I then edit ~/.bash_profile to add the commented lines at the top of your new ~/.bash_personal file. Finally I set up my configuration of vim:

  git clone https://github.com/matthew-brett/myvim.git
  cd myvim
  make
  make links
  

• For your favorite Python version, install virtualenv, and virtualenvwrapper

• If you are using my config (above), you probably want my default environment cleanup for virtualenvs:

  cd myconfig
  make virtualenvs
  

• Make some good virtualenvs, with commands like:

  mkvirtualenv --python=/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin/python python27
  mkvirtualenv --python=/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.6/bin/python3 python36
  

• For each virtualenv you’re going to use (to taste):

  workon python36
  pip install ipython
  

  Maybe also install useful development tools:

  pip install cython