Setting the Path

Once pyalps is successfully installed through the binary installation, we can start to use it by importing it into python. However, the system might not know the path to the python command. Here is an example to set the correct path in the .bash_profile file for a Mac system. For a Linux system, the corresponding file is .bashrc.

Check your python installation directory with an ls command in your terminal.

It is usually installed in a directory like the following:

ls /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.12

Within the bin directory, there are python3 and pip3, as well as other binaries. To run the binaries from this folder with the usual python or pip commands from your terminal, we need to let the system know the path to the binaries and set aliases for the commands.

Find or create a .bash_profile file.

• At your home directory, execute ls -a, or from any directory, excute ls -a ~.

• Edit or create .bash_profile with the vim editor: vi ~/.bash_profile

• Switch to the editing mode by entering i.

• Add the following line for the binary path to the file:

export PATH="$PATH:/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.12/bin"

• Add the following lines to create aliases for the commands:

alias python="python3"

alias pip="pip3"

• Save the changes to your file: Press the esc key and enter :x. This will save your changes to the file and exit the vim.

Tell the system your path and aliases for the binaries:

In your terminal, type source ~/.bash_profile.

You can now start to run any Python files. Your pyalps library is probably installed in the following directory:

/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.12/lib/python3.12/site-packages

Use ls the above or a similar directory to check if the package is correctly installed.