The problem:
Unable to symlink '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.8/bin/python3' to '/Users/mcadams/Documents/ ... /env/bin/python3'
This is, I think, an issue with the new Z shell (zsh) in MacOS Catalina. What I had attempted was my usual virtualenv command, at the bash prompt:
python3 -m venv env
That gave me the “Unable to symlink” pain. So I opened my .zshrc file with nano and added this line:
export PATH="/usr/local/opt/python/libexec/bin:/usr/local/bin:$PATH"
THIS FIXED NOTHING.
So then I changed the command to:
python3.8 -m venv env
And it worked. source env/bin/activate
and I was in my new env, just like normal.
If you aren’t sure which Python 3 version you’ve got, type: python3 --version
and you’ll find out. Note again, this is MacOS, not Windows.