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Gems, Eggs and Perl Modules
On a fresh OS X installation there are three empty directories for add-ons available to all users:
/Library/Ruby
/Library/Python
/Library/Perl
Starting with OS X Lion (10.7), you need sudo to install to these like
so: sudo gem install, sudo easy_install or sudo cpan -i.
An option to avoid sudo is to use an access control list:
chmod +a 'user:YOUR_NAME_HERE allow add_subdirectory,add_file,delete_child,directory_inherit' /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages,
for example, will let you add packages to Python 2.7 as yourself. That
is probably safer than changing the group ownership of the directory.
Habit maybe?
One reason is executables go in /usr/local/bin. Usually this isn’t a
writable location. But if you installed Homebrew as we recommend,
/usr/local will be writable without sudo. So now you are good to
install the development tools you need without risking a sudo.
Rather than changing the rights on /Library/Python, we recommend the following options:
Note, easy_install is deprecated. We install pip (or pip3 for
python3) along with python/python3.
We set up distutils such that pip install will always put modules in
$(brew --prefix)/lib/pythonX.Y/site-packages and scripts in
$(brew --prefix)/share/python. Therefore, you won’t need sudo!
Do brew info python or brew info python3 for precise information
about the paths. Note, a brewed Python still searches for modules in
/Library/Python/X.Y/site-packages and also in
~/Library/Python/X.Y/lib/python/site-packages.
This is only recommended if you don't use a brewed Python.
On OS X, any Python version X.Y also searches in
~/Library/Python/X.Y/lib/python/site-packages for
modules.
That dir might not yet exist, but you can create it:
mkdir -p ~/Library/Python/2.7/lib/python/site-packages
To teach easy_install and pip to install there, either use the
—user switch or create a ~/.pydistutils.cfg file with the
following content:
[install]
install_lib = ~/Library/Python/$py_version_short/lib/python/site-packages
Virtualenv ships pip and
creates isolated Python environments with separate site-packages,
therefore you won’t need sudo.
If you use rbenv or RVM then you should ignore this stuff
Brewed Ruby installs executables to $(brew --prefix)/opt/ruby/bin
without sudo. You should add this to your path. See the caveats in the
ruby formula for up-to-date information.
To make Ruby install install to /usr/local, we need to add
gem: -n/usr/local/bin to your ~/.gemrc. It’s YAML…so do it manually
or use this:
echo "gem: -n/usr/local/bin" >> ~/.gemrc
However all versions of RubyGems before 1.3.6 are buggy and ignore the above setting. Sadly a fresh install of Snow Leopard comes with 1.3.5. Currently the only known way to get round this is to upgrade rubygems as root:
sudo gem update --system
Just install everything into the Homebrew prefix like this:
echo "export GEM_HOME=\"$(brew --prefix)\"" >> ~/.bashrc
Note, maybe you shouldn’t do this on Lion, since Apple have decided it is not a good default.
If you ever did a sudo gem, etc. before then a lot of files will have
been created chown root. Fix with:
sudo chown -R $USER /Library/Ruby /Library/Perl /Library/Python
The Perl module local::lib works similarly to rbenv/RVM (although for modules only, not perl installations). A simple solution that only pollutes your /Library/Perl a little is to install local::lib with sudo:
sudo cpan local::lib
Note that will install some other dependencies like Module::Install.
Then put the appropriate incantation in your shell’s startup, e.g. for
.bash_profile you insert the below, for others see the
local::lib docs.
eval $(perl -I$HOME/perl5/lib/perl5 -Mlocal::lib)
Now (after you restart your shell) cpan or perl -MCPAN -eshell etc.
will install modules and binaries in ~/perl5 and the relevant
subdirectories will be in your PATH and PERL5LIB etc.
If you don’t even want (or can’t) use sudo for bootstrapping
local::lib just manually install local::lib in
~/perl5 and add the relevant path to PERL5LIB before the .bashrc eval incantation.
Another alternative is to use perlbrew to install a separate copy of Perl in your home directory, or wherever you like :
curl -kL http://install.perlbrew.pl | bash
perlbrew install perl-5.16.2
echo ".~/perl5/perlbrew/etc/bashrc" >> ~/.bashrc