macOS installer shell path management improvements
Open
@ned-deily is already working on this.
Since Aug 6, 2025.
OS-mac
topic-installation
- Dominant language
- Python
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Description
The macOS Python installers provided on python.org with each Python release have long provided a fairly primitive mechanism to ensure the newly-installed Python is available on the user's shell PATH. A postinstall script is run by default by the installer which attempts to modify the user's login shell's profile to add the Python framework's bin directory to the shell PATH. A copy of the script is also included by default in the /Applications/Python 3.x directory. There are a number of shortcomings with this approach. This issue is a placeholder for upcoming work in this area.
Linked PRs
- gh-137451
- gh-137452
- gh-137453
Contributor guide
First steps
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- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
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