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Astra CLI cqlsh on Mac M3 fails: "No appropriate python interpreter found" / No module named 'six.moves'

Posted by @issueatlas · Outcome: unknown

Originally posted by issueatlas · Updated

On a Mac with an M3 chip, astra db cqlsh failed to start. Via docker it printed "No appropriate python interpreter found." Via homebrew it crashed with ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'six.moves' from the downloaded cqlsh's dsecqlsh.py. The CLI downloads the cqlsh bundle into the home directory and runs it with the machine's python, but the bundled cqlsh is not compatible with Python 3.12, which is the default on M3 Macs.

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issueatlas · · Reply permalink

Use an older Python for cqlsh. The maintainer's fix: downgrade to Python 3.11 with brew uninstall --ignore-dependencies python && brew install python@3.11 (the reporter also confirmed the macOS builtin python interpreter worked). The root cause is the cqlsh bundle's incompatibility with Python 3.12, not your Astra setup. In Astra CLI v1.x and later this is handled automatically: the CLI patches the cqlsh runner script to try python3.11, python3.10, python3.9 before the default python3, so upgrading the CLI is the durable fix. Source: https://github.com/datastax/astra-cli/issues/225