Portions taken from http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~mitra/csSpring2011/cs327/cx_mac.html (in case that link ever dies.)
Assume you've got homebrew installed.
Download the following files from Oracle
Create a directory /usr/lib/share/oracle
export ORACLE_HOME=/usr/lib/share/oracle
export VERSION=11.2.0.3.0
export ARCH=x86_64
mkdir -p $ORACLE_HOME
Unpack both files to that directory:
cd $ORACLE_HOME
tar -xzf instantclient-basic-$VERSION-macosx-x64.zip
tar -xzf instantclient-sdk-$VERSION-macosx-x64.zip
ln -s libclntsh.dylib.11.2 libclntsh.dylib
ln -s libocci.dylib.11.2 libocci.dylib
export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=$ORACLE_HOME
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$ORACLE_HOME
(Note I did not have to do anything with ottclasses.zip
as suggested in the original utexas instructions.)
Last step is to simply run pip
, you might have to add an arch flag:
env ARCHFLAGS="-arch $ARCH" pip install cx_Oracle
Download cx_Oracle-version.tar.gz from Sourceforge
export CX_ORA_VERSION=5.1.2
tar -xzf cx_Oracle-$CX_ORA_VERSION.tar.gz
cd cx_Oracle-$CX_ORA_VERSION
env ARCHFLAGS="-arch $ARCH" python setup.py build
sudo python setup.py install
Some folks have recommended compiling for 32-bit (i386) instead, although I'm not sure why. 64 bit seems to work for me so YMMV.
Basically:
# compile cx_Oracle for 32-bit (requires downloading 32-bit instantclient sources)
ARCHFLAGS="-arch i386" pip install cx_Oracle
# then make your virtualenv python 32-bit only:
virtualenv .
mv bin/python python.fat
lipo python.fat -remove x86_64 -output bin/python
Seems like Oracle made a change to the basic zip since this was posted, so to anyone else who arrives here:
ln -s libclntsh.dylib.11.2 libclntsh.dylib
ln -s libocci.dylib.11.2 libocci.dylib
should be...
ln -s libclntsh.dylib.11.1 libclntsh.dylib
ln -s libocci.dylib.11.1 libocci.dylib
You'll see both 11.1 files when you unpack the zips, and the links need to point to them. With this tweak, I was able to install cx_Oracle 5.1.2 on OS X 10.8.5 using 64-bit versions of Oracle Instant Client 11.2 and Python 2.7.6. Good luck.