How can I install Easy_Install for Python 2.6.4 in Mac OSX 10.4.11

Question

I get the following errors, I've placed [my name] for anonymity:

>>> python /Users/[myname]/Desktop/setuptools-0.6c11/ez_setup.py 
  File "<stdin>", line 1
    python /Users/[myname]/Desktop/setuptools-0.6c11/ez_setup.py 
                                                   ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

If you can't see the ^ is under the 11.

Or I get this error:

>>> python /Users/[myname]/Desktop/EZ_tutorial/ez_setup.py 
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
NameError: name 'python' is not defined

Answer 1

Try running that command from a shell (i.e. straight from Terminal.app), not from inside the python interpreter.

Answer 2

The ez_setup.py script may or may not work depending on your environment. If not, follow the instructions here. In particular, from the shell, make sure that the python 2.6 you installed is now invoked by the command python:

$ python
Python 2.6.4 (r264:75821M, Oct 27 2009, 19:48:32) 
[GCC 4.0.1 (Apple Inc. build 5493)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> ^D

If not, modify your shell's PATH environment variable. Then download the setuptools 2.6 python egg from here, change to your brower's download directory, and run the downloaded script:

$ cd ~/Downloads   # substitute the appropriate directory name
$ sh setuptools-0.6c11-py2.6.egg

Answer 3

Ned's solution worked for me.