Install Python 3.8 on CentOS 6 from source

To install Python 3.8 on CentOS, you need to install OpenSSL as the one installed by CentOS from yum is very old.

cd /usr/local/src
wget https://www.openssl.org/source/openssl-1.1.1g.tar.gz
tar xvf openssl-1.1.1g.tar.gz
cd openssl-1.1.1g
./config --prefix=/usr/serverok/openssl --openssldir=/usr/serverok/openssl no-ssl2
make
make install

Now edit file

vi ~/.bash_profile

at end of the file, add

export PATH=/usr/serverok/openssl/bin:$PATH
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/serverok/openssl/lib
export LC_ALL="en_US.UTF-8"
export LDFLAGS="-L/usr/serverok/openssl/lib -Wl,-rpath,/usr/serverok/openssl/lib"

Make the settings active with command

source ~/.bash_profile

Now we can install Python 3.8 with

cd /usr/local/src
wget https://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.8.4/Python-3.8.4.tar.xz
tar xvf Python-3.8.4.tar.xz
cd /usr/local/src/Python-3.8.4
make clean && make distclean
./configure --enable-optimizations  --with-openssl=/usr/serverok/openssl/
make altinstall

Now python 3.8 will be available in your system under /usr/local/bin

root@server12:~# python3.8 --version
Python 3.8.4
root@server12:~# which python3.8
/usr/local/bin/python3.8
root@server12:~#