[Tutor] having difficulty installing python

[Steven D'Aprano]

Neven Dragojlovic wrote:
> Please can someone help me? I am trying to install python 2.5.4 on
> MacBookPro running on OS10.6.6, 


This is a mailing list for beginners to programming Python, not a 
general Python mailing list. It's quite likely that nobody here knows 
enough about installing software on OS X to help you.

I suggest you take this question to either a dedicated Mac forum, or to 
the main Python help list python-list at python.org, which is also 
available as a newsgroup comp.lang.python.


A couple of further comments:

Unless you really have need for Python 2.5, I don't think it's worth 
wasting your time on such an old version. The current versions of Python 
are 2.7 and 3.2, so you are missing out on probably 3-5 years of bug 
fixes and new features. I recommend you go straight to 2.7 and 3.2. If 
you only want to install one version, just use 2.7.

If 2.7 and 3.2 aren't yet available for Mac, go for 2.6 and 3.1. Don't 
under any circumstances use 3.0, it was rubbish :)


> but when I try to set it up on
> Terminal by running "python setup.py install" I get the following:
> IDLE Subprocess: Connection to IDLE GUI failed, exiting.
> Tk_MacOSXSetupTkNotifier: first [load] of TkAqua has to occur in the
> main thread!
> with an extra pop-up saying it can not access port 8833. When I try to
> install that port with "sudo port install `8833'" it again says it can
> not find that port.

I don't know what the "port" command might do on OS X (possibly it means 
MacPorts, see below), but I think you are misunderstanding the error 
message. Normally port refers to a networking port, and if IDLE is 
complaining about not accessing port 8833, that means your firewall is 
blocking access to it. You don't install port 8833, because it is 
automatically there, but you need to tell your firewall to trust 
connections to it from localhost.

You might also like to use the MacPorts program for managing Unix 
software on your Mac. I haven't used it myself, I don't have a Mac, but 
I have heard good things about it.



-- 
Steven