How to downgrade python version from 3.8 to 3.7 (mac)

I’m using Python & okta-aws tools and in order to fetch correct credentials on aws I need to run okta-aws init. But got an error message of Could not read roles from Okta and the system prompted that"Your Pipfile requires python_version 3.7, but you are using 3.8.3 (/usr/local/Cellar/o/1.1.4/l/.venv/bin/python).

I’ve tried to search all the Pipfiles on the mac and it seems that the Pipflie under my ~/Pipfile and /usr/local/Cellar/python@3.8/3.8.3_2/libexec/bin/Pipfile all have the same python version of 3.8, while the Pipfile under my /usr/local/Cellar/okta-aws-tools/1.1.4/libexec/Pipfile has required python_version = 3.7.

I’ve been struggling with this for a while and really not sure how I can fix this.

Answer

Consider installing pyenv with Homebrew on macOS

brew update
brew install pyenv

OR Clone the repository to get the latest version of pyenv

 git clone https://github.com/pyenv/pyenv.git ~/.pyenv

Define your environment variables (For a recent MacOS you may want to replace ~/.bash_profile with ~/.zshrc as that is the default shell)

echo 'export PYENV_ROOT="$HOME/.pyenv"' >> ~/.bash_profile
echo 'export PATH="$PYENV_ROOT/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bash_profile
echo 'eval "$(pyenv init -)"' >> ~/.bash_profile
source ~/.bash_profile

Restart your shell so the path changes take effect

exec "$SHELL"

Verify the installation and check the available python versions

pyenv install --list

Install the required python version

pyenv install 3.7

Set it as your global version after installation

pyenv global 3.7

eval pyenv path

eval "$(pyenv init --path)"

Verify your current python version the system is using

python3 --version