Installing the AWS CLI - Short Version

Once again, this is a very quick and dirty shortened version of their docs.  A lot of this is straight from AWS docs but I've cut out all the clutter and documented how to make the install go smoothly as there are some errors you'll probably most likely run into.

I'm using the AWS CLI for working with/communicating to the Amazon EC2 Container Service so that I can start to create docker images and containers in order to push to my EC2 Virtual Server.


Installing AWS CLI

Verify Python is installed

Type python --version at the command-line

if it's not installed I have homebrew  so I installed it with brew install python

Verify Pip is installed

Type pip --help at the command-line

you should see this:



if not, then install it with sudo easy install pip

Install the AWS CLI using Pip

Type sudo -H pip install awscli --ignore-installed six at the command-line

Notice 2 things:

• added the -H or else you'll get a permission error like this:         

• added --ignore-installed six at the end because there's a bug with the aws cli install in that aws tries to uninstall six (python) which is already installed in OS X EL Captain so when aws tries to uninstall it (in order to install it), it blows up due to permission errors to those files it's trying to uninstall six 

Verify AWS CLI Installed Properly

Type aws help.  

You should see this (type Q to get out):