Python 3.9 in RedHat Enterprise Linux 8.4
Tuesday, May 25. 2021
Back in 2018 RHEL 8 had their future-binoculars set to transitioning over deprecated Python 2 into 3 and were the first ones not to have a python. Obviously the distro had Python, but the command didn't exist. See What, No Python in RHEL 8 Beta? for more info.
Last week 8.4 was officially out. RHEL has the history of being "stuck" in the past. They do move into newer versions rarely generating the feeling of obsoletion, staleness and being stable to the point of RedHat supporting otherwise obsoleted software themselves.
The only problem with that approach is the trouble of getting newer versions. If you talk about any rapid-moving piece of softare like GCC or NodeJS or Python or MariaDB or ... any. The price to pay for stableness is pretty steep with RHEL. Finally they have a solution for this and have made different versions of stable software available. I wonder why it took them that many years.
Seeing the alternatives:
# alternatives --list
ifup auto /usr/libexec/nm-ifup
ld auto /usr/bin/ld.bfd
python auto /usr/libexec/no-python
python3 auto /usr/bin/python3.6
As promised, there is no python, but there is python3. However, officially support for 3.6 will end in 7 months. See PEP 494 -- Python 3.6 Release Schedule for more. As mentioned, RedHat is likely to offer their own support after that end-of-life.
Easy fix. First, dnf install python39. Then:
# alternatives --set python3 /usr/bin/python3.9
# python3 --version
Python 3.9.2
For options, see output of dnf list python3*. You can choose between existing 3.6 or install 3.8 or 3.9 to the side.
Now you're set!
