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Docs: macOS installation instructions fail on modern macOS (PEP 668 / externally-managed-environment) #1657

@Ajeetmaurya395

Description

@Ajeetmaurya395

Issue details
I was following the macOS installation guide today on my MacBook Air (Sonoma), and the pip install command failed with the externally-managed-environment error.

Screenshot 1: The current documentation

Image

Version
Latest macOS (Sonoma/Sequoia)

Platform
[X] Mac

Description
The current macOS documentation recommends using python3 -m pip install ... --user or brew install python. This fails on modern macOS versions because of PEP 668 system protection, which prevents pip from modifying the system-managed Python environment.

Steps to Reproduce

  1. On a fresh macOS installation (Sonoma 14.x or newer).
  2. Run the command from the docs: python3 -m pip install mavproxy pymavlink --user --upgrade.

Actual Behavior
The installation is blocked by the OS with the following error:

Screenshot 2: The terminal error

Image

Proposed Solution
The documentation should be updated to explicitly recommend installing within a virtual environment (venv) or using pipx.

Recommended update for the Mac section:

# Create a virtual environment to avoid PEP 668 errors
python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate

# Install inside the virtual environment
pip install MAVProxy pymavlink

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