Overview

Create a standalone development environment with the latest version of Python using docker.

In this example, we are running macOS 11.5.1:

jemurray@phalanges:~/foo $ sw_vers
ProductName:	macOS
ProductVersion:	11.5.1
BuildVersion:	20G80

Which has Python 3.8.2:

jemurray@phalanges:~ $ /usr/bin/python3 --version
Python 3.8.2

With docker we can install the latest version of Python in an isolated container without affecting the operating system and possibly breaking a core system function.

Examples

Run an interactive Python environment using the lightweight Alpine Linux base image:

docker run -it python:3-alpine

If the image does not exist, docker will download the necessary files during the first execution:

jemurray@phalanges:~ $ docker run -it python:3-alpine
Unable to find image 'python:3-alpine' locally
3-alpine: Pulling from library/python
29291e31a76a: Already exists
7905544193a1: Already exists
f5e5def5d5f7: Already exists
cef6c1fdc9e4: Already exists
24e85e6a20ef: Pull complete
Digest: sha256:e74b38ebb56eec206443291712ea932a99bf373842cd516cc11961d8139b4f79
Status: Downloaded newer image for python:3-alpine
Python 3.9.6 (default, Aug  6 2021, 21:28:54)
[GCC 10.3.1 20210424] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>

Create an interactive command-line environment which mounts a local file system directory and executes as a non-root user:

docker run -v "$PWD"/foo:/foo --user nobody  -it python:3-alpine sh

Check the version of python from the CLI:

jemurray@phalanges:~ $ docker run -v "$PWD"/foo:/foo --user nobody  -it python:3-alpine sh
~ $ python --version
Python 3.9.6

The local file system is located in ~/foo with a single file in it:

jemurray@phalanges:~/foo $ pwd
/Users/jemurray/foo
jemurray@phalanges:~/foo $ ls -al
total 8
drwxr-xr-x   3 jemurray  staff    96 Aug 14 23:12 .
drwxr-xr-x+ 92 jemurray  staff  2944 Aug 14 23:12 ..
-rwxr-xr-x   1 jemurray  staff    46 Aug 14 23:12 hello.py

The -v option brings the local file system into the docker environment:

~ $ cd foo/
/foo $ ./hello.py
Hello World