Editing Software Development Platforms (section)

===Python===

OS-X actually includes python.  However, it tends to be an slightly outdated version of python.  So, the best thing to do is to get the official python distribution from http://python.org/download/ .  There are a couple of versions there, you want to make sure that you get the one labelled something like. '''Python 2.7.1 Mac OS X 64-bit/32-bit x86-64/i386 Installer (for Mac OS X 10.6)'''  The advantage of this version is that it is 64-bit.

Make sure that this new version of python is on your path, so when you run python, you get this version and not the system default one.  

You should have lines like the following at the bottom of your .bash_profile .  The python installation normally does this, but you should check to make sure:

 # Setting PATH for Python 2.7
 # The orginal version is saved in .bash_profile.pysave
 PATH="/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin:${PATH}"
 export PATH