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I am revisiting the python language and experiencing difficulty setting up my environment.

I am using - Mac Mojave (10.14) - python 2.7.10 (packaged with the system) - python 3.7.4 (installed using homebrew) - homebrew 2.1.14 - pip 19.2.3

I encounter an error message when attempting to install watchdog via pip. I believe the error is caused by pip attempting to install in python 2.7 folders (without sufficient permissions) instead of the python 3 folder

I have tried uninstalling, reinstalling and upgrading python 3

I encounter the following error message when attempting to install watchdog via pip 

 1 error generated.
    Error compiling module, falling back to pure Python
    running install_lib
    creating /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/yaml
    error: could not create '/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/yaml': Permission denied
    ----------------------------------------
ERROR: Command errored out with exit status 1: /usr/bin/python -u -c 'import sys, setuptools, tokenize; sys.argv[0] = '"'"'/private/var/folders/4d/spq3r5t92654252ql994_l540000gr/T/pip-install-nqmq6O/PyYAML/setup.py'"'"'; __file__='"'"'/private/var/folders/4d/spq3r5t92654252ql994_l540000gr/T/pip-install-nqmq6O/PyYAML/setup.py'"'"';f=getattr(tokenize, '"'"'open'"'"', open)(__file__);code=f.read().replace('"'"'\r\n'"'"', '"'"'\n'"'"');f.close();exec(compile(code, __file__, '"'"'exec'"'"'))' install --record /private/var/folders/4d/spq3r5t92654252ql994_l540000gr/T/pip-record-g8Qjzh/install-record.txt --single-version-externally-managed --compile Check the logs for full command output.
chronowalker
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    Try `sudo -H python3 -m pip install ...` – Selcuk Oct 17 '19 at 00:43
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    Generally, using `sudo` with pip is not a good idea unless you're aware of exactly what you're doing, because of the possibility of mangling OS-managed packages and otherwise causing harm (also the execution of arbitrary package code (setup.py) as root). I would definitely hesitate to give this out as a first suggestion, at least. – Chris Hunt Oct 17 '19 at 01:25

2 Answers2

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You need to upgrade setuptools and pip. You can do that by running:

pip install -U pip setuptools
ttfreeman
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8

When you run pip install, exactly which pip gets used depends on several things like your PATH, shell, shell configuration, and operating system.

The best thing to do is invoke pip using <python> -m pip where <python> is the Python that you want to install the package for. For example, if you run python3 to use the Python that you want to install the package for, then run python3 -m pip.

If you're running python3 -m pip install ... and getting permission errors, then you can execute python3 -m pip install --user ..., which will install it to your user site-packages directory and available when you execute python3 under your user.

Chris Hunt
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  • Your suggestion to use the python3 command to force pip to use the correct version resolved the issue, thank you. It seems the watchdog package is now installed but not correctly being referenced in my Sublime Text environment (Tools > Build) however, when I run the script in a terminal shell, the script executes successfully. – chronowalker Oct 17 '19 at 07:43