It looks like you're trying to install a specific minor version of Python3 (3.8), you can do this in Alpine by using semver like this which will install a version of python3>=3.8.0 <3.9.0-0:

apk add python3=~3.8

You may use the python official image which offers alpine tags as well. You will probably get the most state-of-the-art python install:

e.g.:

FROM python:3-alpine

instead of python3-pip install py3-pip

apk add --update python3 py3-pip

This is what I use in a Dockerfile for an alpine image:

# Install python/pip
ENV PYTHONUNBUFFERED=1
RUN apk add --update --no-cache python3 && ln -sf python3 /usr/bin/python
RUN python3 -m ensurepip
RUN pip3 install --no-cache --upgrade pip setuptools

Look here: https://pkgs.alpinelinux.org/packages So what you are looking for are the python3 and py3-pip packages.

A suitable command to use inside a dockerfile/etc would be:

apk add --no-cache python3 py3-pip

Explanation of the --no-cache flag

Note however, that you need to add the community repository since py3-pip is not present on main.

You can try this command

apk add python3