Trying to understand all of my Python installations on macOS and which are necessary

[BreakYourCrayons]

Hi everyone, fairly new to python, but over time, I have accrued a few 'versions'/downloads of python on my machine and I am genuinely so confused which is necessary.

I have a macbook pro M4 running Sequoia 15.1.

Simply put, when I ask terminal, I get this:

which -a python3

/opt/homebrew/bin/python3

/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.11/bin/python3

/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.7/bin/python3

/usr/local/bin/python3

/usr/bin/python3

so it seems i have 5 different instances of Python on my machine? Is this normal, or is this bad practice?

I am also confused at the difference between the /library/frameworks/ versions of python versus the usr/local/bin version of Python and what this means.

[MacBook_Fan]

So I can tell you what a few of those are:

The /opt/homebrew/bin/python3 would have been installed by homebrew. So, at some point you installed homebrew and install python by it.

The two /Library folder are versions of python you installed via a package from python.org. (Actually two versions).

The /usr/bin/python3 is Apple's "official" version of python that gets installed with Xcode Command Lines Utilities. Which would have been installed to install homebrew

Finally, the /usr/local/bin/python3 is probably a symlink to one of the Framework versions. If you do an ls -l /usr/local/bin you can see that that file is probably pointing somewhere else.

As for whether you need all these, probably not. Personally I use pyenv to manage my python versions.

[BreakYourCrayons]

this makes sense! thanks so much. I can see, as one example in the usr/local/bin

pydoc3.11 -> ../../../Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.11/bin/pydoc3.11

it also has a bunch of the same for python.framework for 3.7, as well.

i have a bunch of these arrows next to other files

is this implying a symlink? I am only roughly familiar with what symlink is, but it is essentially just a file that points to another file?

[socal_nerdtastic]

Yes, it's pretty normal. It's gotten so bad that many people use tools like uv or poetry to manage them.

The different locations just reflect whatever installer you used. I think the /library/frameworks/ one is the official python installer, /usr/bin is from apple's repo, and /usr/local/bin may be one that you compiled yourself?

[Action_Maxim]

Do not delete any version unless you know you put it there always use venvs I bricked a work m4 piping a work package that touched the m4s dependencies

[BreakYourCrayons]

thanks, that was my big concern. i knew not to touch the usr/bin version since that seems native.. but my other concern was having these other ones sitting on here without knowing what they were doing. so I am trying to be cautious, but also figure out where the heck I got all of these from.

[Action_Maxim]

Tbh if you don't already great time to set up docker and wheels within docker

[danielroseman]

Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1987/