How do I know which HomeBrew Python 3 Interpreter (Mac, Mavericks) to choose in PyCharm?

Question

I'm a Django/Python newbie (although I've done a lot elsewhere).

For various reasons (e.g trying to fool around with Heroku) I decided to uninstall my Python 2.x and 3.x on my Mac (running Mavericks) and replace with a HomeBrew installation.

I know very little about all this, but followed the HomeBrew directions.

When I want to choose a Python interpreter in PyCharm I'm confronted with a bewildering number (3.3, 3.3m, 3.3-32, etc --

)

— have I done something wrong in the installation? Which interpreter should I choose?

Thanks for any help!

Answer 1

Unless you are tied to a specific version (e.g. 3.4), choose /usr/local/bin/python2 or /usr/local/bin/python3 depending on which major version you need.

python2 and python3 are symlinks to the most recent (or preferred) 2.x/3.x version installed; python is a symlink to the default interpreter, which usually is python2, but could be python3, depending on the system.

The python2/python3 distinction is necessary because Python 3 introduces major changes in syntax and semantics, making a Python 2 script potentially fail.