Installing nltk for Python 3.4 on Mac OS 10.9

Question

I have been attempting to get nltk running under python 3.4 without success. Using the instructions at http://www.nltk.org/install.html:

sudo pip install -U nltk

This works for 2.7 that is preinstalled on the Mac, however when using

sudo pip3 install -U nltk

to try and install under 3.4 I get the following error:

    /usr/local/Cellar/python3/3.4.1_1/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.4/lib/python3.4/distutils/dist.py:260: UserWarning: Unknown distribution option: 'zip_safe'

  warnings.warn(msg)

/usr/local/Cellar/python3/3.4.1_1/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.4/lib/python3.4/distutils/dist.py:260: UserWarning: Unknown distribution option: 'test_suite'

  warnings.warn(msg)

/usr/local/Cellar/python3/3.4.1_1/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.4/lib/python3.4/distutils/dist.py:260: UserWarning: Unknown distribution option: 'entry_points'

  warnings.warn(msg)

usage: setup.py [global_opts] cmd1 [cmd1_opts] [cmd2 [cmd2_opts] ...]

   or: setup.py --help [cmd1 cmd2 ...]

   or: setup.py --help-commands

   or: setup.py cmd --help



error: invalid command 'bdist_egg'

/private/tmp/pip_build_root/nltk/distribute-0.6.21-py3.4.egg

Traceback (most recent call last):

  File "/private/tmp/pip_build_root/nltk/distribute_setup.py", line 143, in use_setuptools

    raise ImportError

ImportError



During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:



Traceback (most recent call last):

  File "<string>", line 17, in <module>

  File "/private/tmp/pip_build_root/nltk/setup.py", line 23, in <module>

    distribute_setup.use_setuptools()

  File "/private/tmp/pip_build_root/nltk/distribute_setup.py", line 145, in use_setuptools

    return _do_download(version, download_base, to_dir, download_delay)

  File "/private/tmp/pip_build_root/nltk/distribute_setup.py", line 125, in _do_download

    _build_egg(egg, tarball, to_dir)

  File "/private/tmp/pip_build_root/nltk/distribute_setup.py", line 116, in _build_egg

    raise IOError('Could not build the egg.')

OSError: Could not build the egg.

Python 3.4 was installed with brew and both bumpy and setuptools are installed correctly. I have seen hints of this problem through some goggling but no definitive answers.

Answer 1

I just downloaded the 3.0.0b2 .tar.gz file from PyPI, unzipped it, and ran

sudo python3 setup.py install

in the unzipped directory and everything worked fine. I had the same issue trying to install from pip3. I should also note that I use MacPorts for Python and all the rest, but hopefully that won't make a difference.