Installation and the sqlite3 CLI

Probably already installed

SQLite ships with macOS, most Linux distributions, and every Python install. Windows ships SQLite as part of the C runtime since Windows 10. You probably do not need to install anything to follow this quest.

What you might want is a newer SQLite than the system one. macOS in particular ships an older Apple-curated build (3.43 as of 2026) when current upstream is 3.53+. Newer versions matter for STRICT tables, JSONB, FTS5 trigram, and recent performance work.

macOS — brew install sqlite installs upstream into /opt/homebrew/opt/sqlite/bin/sqlite3. Add it to PATH or invoke explicitly.
Ubuntu / Debian — sudo apt install sqlite3 libsqlite3-dev.
Fedora / RHEL — sudo dnf install sqlite sqlite-devel.
Windows — download the Precompiled Binaries zip from sqlite.org and add to PATH, or use winget install SQLite.SQLite.
Python's bundled SQLite — python -c 'import sqlite3; print(sqlite3.sqlite_version)'. To upgrade Python's bundled SQLite you typically rebuild Python against a newer libsqlite, or use pysqlite3-binary.

Tip: When something works in the CLI but not in Python (or vice versa), check both versions: sqlite3 --version and python -c 'import sqlite3; print(sqlite3.sqlite_version)'. The two often differ — STRICT tables, JSONB, and several PRAGMAs landed in specific versions.

Code

Confirm you have a recent SQLite·bash

# CLI version
sqlite3 --version
# 3.53.0 2026-04-01 ... (or older — Apple's macOS build lags upstream)

# Python's bundled libsqlite — sometimes different from CLI
python3 -c 'import sqlite3; print(sqlite3.sqlite_version, sqlite3.version)'
# 3.43.2 2.6.0   <- libsqlite version, then Python sqlite3 module version

# If you need newer in Python:
pip install pysqlite3-binary
python3 -c 'import pysqlite3; print(pysqlite3.sqlite_version)'
# 3.53.0

Open a fresh database and look around·bash

# Create / open the database
sqlite3 demo.db

# Inside the REPL — these are 'dot commands' (covered next lesson)
sqlite> .help
sqlite> .databases
sqlite> .tables
sqlite> .quit

Exercise

Confirm three installation paths on your machine: (1) the system sqlite3 CLI version, (2) the libsqlite version Python's stdlib sqlite3 module is linked against, (3) the version you would get from a fresh brew install sqlite or your distro's package manager. Note any drift and decide which one you want to be your daily driver.

Installation and the sqlite3 CLI

Probably already installed

Code

External links

Exercise

Progress

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