Preface

Recently, I deployed a Python project to a server, but the Python version on the server was quite outdated, so I proceeded to update it.

The methods I found online all involved downloading the Python 3.6 source code and compiling it manually. However, I encountered some issues while compiling and installing it on the server. That's when I thought of using Ubuntu's PPA method. Since Debian and Ubuntu share the same origins, in theory, Ubuntu's PPAs should also work on Debian.

The operation steps are as follows:

Adding Software Repository

add-apt-repository ppa:deadsnakes/ppa

However, Debian does not have add-apt-repository, so you need to install it first.

apt-get install software-properties-common

After installing this, you can use the command above to add the PPA source.

Don't rush at this point, because PPAs are originally for Ubuntu, and using them on Debian always requires a few small modifications.

Open the PPA website: https://launchpad.net/~jonathonf/+archive/ubuntu/python-3.6

Select the Ubuntu version 14.04.

Copy these two lines of code.

Then open the directory for software sources:

cd /etc/apt/sources.list.d

You can see there is a file inside:

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 290 Jun 19 00:26 jonathonf-python-3_6-jessie.list

Edit it:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/jonathonf/python-3.6/ubuntu jessie main

deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/jonathonf/python-3.6/ubuntu jessie main

Replace the original content with the content just copied, then save.

Update Software Sources & Installation

apt update
apt install python3.6

Install the corresponding version of pip

su
curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py | python3.6
(pip -V && pip3 -V && pip3.6 -V) | uniq

Check Version

python3.6 -m pip -V

Creating a Symbolic Link

cd /usr/bin
rm python3
ln -s python3.6 python3

And that's it!