Quick start for Airflow on Mac OS

Hello,

Installing Airflow on Mac OS in the most common configuration (Postgres / MySQL, Celery, Redis) causes problems for new users for several reasons:

• MacOS ships with Python 2.7, so every user needs to install Python 3+.
• Not every Python 3+ build is compatible with Airflow. See: http://apache-airflow-docs.s3-website.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/docs/apache-airflow/latest/installation.html#symbol-not-found-py-getargcargv
• We support an older version of mysqlclient, which requires setting additional compiler parameters on newer Mac OS. See: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/43612243/install-mysqlclient-for-django-python-on-mac-os-x-sierra/54521244
• cryptography require rust compiler: https://cryptography.io/en/latest/installation.html#building-cryptography-on-macos
• and more…

It would be great if we have a guide that describes how to install Airflow on Mac OS and not fall into any trap related to installing dependencies. I am thinking of a new guide similar to the quick start on Docker and quick start locally. The guide will configure a similar environment as in Docker, but will install everything locally. Some users do not use Docker or are not comfortable with it, so we should also describe native installations. The local quickstart guide is also not sufficient as it does not describe Mac OS specific problems and sets up an environment that requires a lot of changes to be able to use it effectively.

In the future, I will also want to prepare installations for Linux and Windows, but I would prefer to deal with each environment step by step. For this reason, I am also not very interested in updating the quick start guide locally. This too will benefit the end-user as they will have a quick start guide that addresses their needs more precisely. They will not have to search for information that is specific to their operating system.

Part of: https://github.com/apache/airflow/issues/13838

[potiuk]

Ah yeah in breeze it’s the same. First time you need to run it and I believe it even prints it it in yellow that you should - as a warning.

[potiuk]

yep