Why is the apt-get function not working in the terminal on Mac OS X v10.9 (Mavericks)?

Question

I was watching this, and, as you can see, the first command I am told to put in is:

sudo apt-get install python-setuptools

When I do this, it outputs:

sudo: apt-get: command not found

I have no idea why this is the case.

How can I resolve this so I am following the tutorial correctly?

Answer 1

Mac OS X doesn't have apt-get. There is a package manager called Homebrew that is used instead.

This command would be:

brew install python

Use Homebrew to install packages that you would otherwise use apt-get for.

The page I linked to has an up-to-date way of installing homebrew, but at present, you can install Homebrew as follows:

Type the following in your Mac OS X terminal:

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

After that, usage of Homebrew is brew install <package>.

One of the prerequisites for Homebrew are the XCode command line tools.

1. Install XCode from the App Store.
2. Follow the directions in this Stack Overflow answer to install the XCode Command Line Tools.

Background

A package manager (like apt-get or brew) just gives your system an easy and automated way to install packages or libraries. Different systems use different programs. apt and its derivatives are used on Debian based linux systems. Red Hat-ish Linux systems use rpm (or at least they did many, many, years ago). yum is also a package manager for RedHat based systems.

Alpine based systems use apk.

Warning

As of 25 April 2016, homebrew opts the user in to sending analytics by default. This can be opted out of in two ways:

Setting an environment variable:

1. Open your favorite environment variable editor.
2. Set the following: HOMEBREW_NO_ANALYTICS=1 in whereever you keep your environment variables (typically something like ~/.bash_profile)
3. Close the file, and either restart the terminal or source ~/.bash_profile.

Running the following command:

brew analytics off

the analytics status can then be checked with the command:

brew analytics