How do I install and use Python 3.8 on an Amazon EC2 Linux Instance?

Question

So I followed a tutorial to install python 3.8 and I'm able to use it by doing the command python3.8, but for some reason the code in my main.py file is still running on python 3.7. If I enter python3.8 main.py, I get errors saying that I don't have modules installed. I don't know how to install my modules on python 3.8 because when I do sudo python3.8 -m pip install pymongo it says sudo: python3.8: command not found. Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Amazon has it's own Linux with extras, the command is:

    sudo amazon-linux-extras install python3.8

taken from https://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticbeanstalk/latest/dg/eb-cli3-install-linux.html but after installing 3.7 from there, there is the above update command appearing during the install telling how to upgrade. Ahh the convolution of hosted virtual machines, still easier than trying to get a console command line login on any other Linux on AWS.

It does rebuild the python to 3.8, cleaning up files from 3.7, so boom a clean build of 3.8 thanks to Amazon.

All that being said, the default "python" will still be 2.7 as there is no backward compatibility, and many think getting rid of 2.7 will cause problems.

So what NOT TO DO NEXT as we are done is:

    sudo rm /usr/bin/python  (which is only a link to /usr/bin/python2.7)
    sudo ln -s /usr/bin/python3.8 /usr/bin/python

but usually peeps simply type python3.8 to specifically run the new version.

Answer 2

These answers are now out of date as of Amazon Linux 2023. Amazon Linux 2023 FAQ

Q: Does AL2023 have Amazon-Linux-Extras like AL2?

A: No, AL2023 does not have extras. For higher-level software packages like language runtimes, we will use the quarterly release where we will add major/minor updates to packages as separate namespaced packages in addition to the default package provided in the repository. For example, default Python version in Amazon Linux 2023 may be 3.8, but we will add Python 3.9 (python39) as a separate namespaced package whenever it is made available. These additional packages will closely follow their upstream release cadence and support model and their support policies can be accessed by the package manager for compliance and security use cases. Default packages will continue to be supported throughout the life of AL2023.

Python is installed by default as python3 exact version is managed by Amazon. It is possible to pick a different version, but I have not found the instructions, since the currently install 3.9 works for my needs.

python3 --version
Python 3.9.16

python3x --version
always generated
-bash: python3x: command not found
regardless of choice of x