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
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
- On a fresh macOS installation (Sonoma 14.x or newer).
- 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
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