Setup

Setup Python for working with this book.

In this book, we will setup the Python interpreter from source using python.org website.

Linux

Here are different methods to setup Python for your linux distribution.

Ubuntu

We make sure that source packages are enabled in the repo. The file /etc/apt/sources.list lists all the source packages.

For bionic, we enable it using the command.

deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ bionic main

Then we install the source dependencies.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get build-dep python3.8

Download Python from python.org

curl -O https://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.8.1/Python-3.8.1.tgz
tar xvf Python-3.8.1.tgz

Build Python

cd Python-3.8.1/
./configure
make

Check the version of Python

$ ./python --version
Python 3.8.1

Let us setup a virtual environment with the interpreter.

$ mkdir ~/pyvenvs
$ ./python -m venv --copies ~/pyvenvs/learn-python-with-tests
$ source ~/pyvenvs/learn-python-with-tests/bin/activate
(learn-python-with-tests) $ python --version
Python 3.8.1

Let us install the two utilities that will use in this book.

Let us install static type checker, mypy.

pip install --upgrade mypy

And install testing tool and the library pytest We wont be using pytest in this tutorial, we will use it as test runner.

pip install --upgrade mypy