# Installing python 3.4 as a user

## Building your own python 3

- Go to the python download page
- Select the “Latest Python 3 Release”
- Download a tarball and extract it
- Run `./configure && make` (takes only a few minutes even on old CPUs)
- Edit the poezio launch.sh script to make it call your user-compiled python binary

## Pyenv (x86/x86_64 only)

Pyenv is a useful script that allows you to install several python versions in your user directory, and lets you manage which one you want depending on the directory you are in. It is therefore useful for people who are on distributions not providing the latest stable version, such as Debian or CentOS.

You can follow the step-by-step installation tutorial on github that will help you install it to your home directory (on step 5, you should use 3.4.2 which is the latest python 3.4 release at the time of writing this page); or you can use the automated installer and use `pyenv install 3.4.2` thereafter.

Then you only need to add a `.python-version` file containing `3.4.2` in your poezio directory to make the python version in that directory default to the python 3.4.2 installed with pyenv.

## Other

pythonz allows the same kind of version management as pyenv, but builds from source instead of fetching precompiled binaries, so it allows more control over what is going on.