Introduction
The AWS CLI is a command line interface which acts as a gateway to many AWS components. It can sometimes be a little confusing to get this handy tool working on your macOS computer, so here’s a really quick run-through on how to get it going.
Requirements:
- A macOS computer
- Python
Install using Pip
Pop open your terminal (you can hit Command + Space, and type terminal to get to it quickly), then enter the following:
$ pip install awscli --upgrade --user
There should be some activity while this is downloaded. Once this is done, head on to the next step.
Add the CLI tool to your PATH
This part can sometimes be a little confusing for newbies to the command line. The PATH
is what is known as an environment variable, and it essentially tells your terminal where to look for executable programs, such as the AWS CLI. For your terminal to be able to find the tool, you’ll need to add it to your PATH
like so:
$ pico ~/.bashrc
This will open a text editor full of code. Scroll all the way to the bottom by pressing Ctrl + V. Once you’re there, paste the following line:
export PATH=~/.local/bin:$PATH
What this is basically doing is saying to your terminal, I want to add the ~/.local/bin
directory (which contains Pip executables) to any existing PATH
that has been set.
Once you’re done, the final step is to load the new configuration into your current terminal session:
$ source ~/.bashrc
You should now be able to use the AWS CLI. You can check this by running this final command:
$ aws --version
You should see something like this:
aws-cli/1.15.76 Python/2.7.10 Darwin/17.5.0 botocore/1.10.75
You’re all set! Enjoy!