Out of curiosity, do any of you simultaneously use a Windows and Linux machine (without or without Wine, etc.)?
Yes, it's called a Mac. ;-) On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 4:15 PM, Matt S. <[email protected]> wrote: > Feeling the pain as we speak... trying to figure out how to install SciPy > in a virtualenv on a system that I don't have root privileges on (and > therefore can't use a package manager rather than compile from source some > significant dependencies). Funnily and thankfully though, this group, > Continuum > Analytics <https://store.continuum.io/cshop/anaconda/>, was mentioned the > other day in the Training thread, and just moments ago I happened to be > looped back to their site while the desperation of not making much progress > was setting in. Turns out they make a Python distro called Anaconda? > Looks very cool and pretty tricked out for number crunching and free to > ALL and without any root requirement. I haven't tried it out but it looks > like it could be a huge help to many. > > In the past, at times, I used the Enthought Python distro but got nervous > that I was being too coddled by it (and b/c it's only free to academics). > Nowadays I mostly go the DIY route (using virtualenv/pip as much as > possible). But boy does it get dicey when you don't have root privileges > (on Linux and therefore can't use a package manager), or you're on Windows > (especially when trying to do the next task--see next), or you're trying to > get a package with a lot of dependencies installed into a virtualenv (or > non-standard place). > > Getting a little off topic now... > > Lately I've been experimenting with Ubuntu and trying to take a Windows > diet (figuring out 8 was not my first choice). But it's damn hard to take > the diet too far b/c neither system is perfect for all tasks (and lack of > iTunes and Picasa in Linux was a big shock to my routine). But despite > some inconvenience in my attempt to figure out how to optimally use > multiple OSs for work and play, it's been good to find Git for Windows > (msysGit) and delve into Pandas (which precipitated wanting to get SciPy > installed). What's not been good is a lack of closure on figuring out why > I can no longer paste from Windows into an X window. Realizing that I > can't use Ctrl+C in ipython on Windows has been another pain. Out of > curiosity, do any of you simultaneously use a Windows and Linux machine > (without or without Wine, etc.)? > > Cheers, > Matt > > > On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 1:54 PM, Nimret Sandhu <[email protected]> wrote: > >> folks using linux care to chime in on whether they have similar issues >> when installing dependencies in python or not? I tend to stay away from >> Windows and have never used OS X (well, until the last few weeks at my >> current gig). I find OS X to be a more classy environment that Windows but >> in many ways even more restrictive. I have really never had any issues with >> 3rd party library dependency management but then again I don't do >> scientific computing. I generally use jython.org for most of what I do >> anyways. >> >> my points regarding apt-get, maven, etc were just that other >> languages/environments have found solutions which work fine for managing >> transitive dependencies in general. I didn't mean to imply that you can use >> them for managing dependencies in python or the native libraries that >> python leverages. >> >> in java land we generally just create a maven (or ivy or gradle - the new >> coolness) config file and declare our immediate library dependencies in >> there. The infrastructure then automatically determines the correct >> transitive dependencies and downloads the correct versions of all the >> necessary libraries. maven has other warts (xml config for one thing) but >> the transitive dependencies part generally works rather well. And yes, >> folks in the community have gone through the effort of setting up and >> maintaining the infrastructure around all of this to ensure that it works >> well and is freely available. >> >> cheers, >> - >> Nimret Sandhu >> http://www.nimret.org >> >> >> On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 12:04 PM, James Thiele <[email protected]>wrote: >> >>> You are totally spot on in your description of how hard it can be to >>> install stuff. Years ago the first time I tried to install some Python 2.x >>> version from source on OS X I ran into the problem that the filesystem is >>> case insensitive. I've tried to install PIL at least 3 times and never got >>> the dependecies right. >>> >>> >>> On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 11:36 AM, Chris Calloway <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>>> On 7/18/2013 9:24 PM, Nimret Sandhu wrote: >>>> >>>>> looking past the hubris in your email, >>>>> >>>> >>>> Wow. >>>> >>>> >>>> you're talking about dependency >>>>> management [DM] >>>>> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/**Dependency_hell<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dependency_hell>) >>>>> which >>>>> exists in libraries, OSes and pretty much anywhere there is coupling >>>>> between reusable code. It can be solved statically by linking against >>>>> specific versions which work together but is a little more challenging >>>>> to solve dynamically. There are tools in python to manage this though - >>>>> http://www.pip-installer.org/ for compile time and >>>>> http://www.virtualenv.org/ for runtime. >>>>> >>>>> java has maven, gradle, etc for compile time DM and tech like osgi for >>>>> runtime DM. apt-get on *nix, ports on bsd are tools on OSes for >>>>> addressing the same issues. They all work rather painlessly without >>>>> 'ridiculous amounts of work'. >>>>> >>>> >>>> This is well beyond dependency hell. It's compiler and linker options >>>> and many other things. If you think pip solves these problems, then you >>>> haven't tried to use pip to install the dependencies for ipython notebook >>>> on Windows. And certainly haven't tried is across the wide variety of >>>> Windows and Pythons brought into a classroom. These problems don't even >>>> start to get addressed until the setup.py, and then only for the Python >>>> bits. >>>> >>>> If it wasn't a ridiculous amount of work, there wouldn't be a need for >>>> prepackaged "sumo" distributions like Canopy or Anaconda. Comparing this to >>>> apt-get and ports misses the point. With apt-get, you are sometimes able to >>>> install some pieces of the Python scientific stack for the particular >>>> system python that apt-get repo for that particular OS and OS version is >>>> also managing. But that's rarely what anyone needs. It only works because >>>> someone has already done the ridiculous amounts of work packaging binaries >>>> for a particular narrow use case. pip gets from a generalized repo of >>>> python source with setups that often run compilers and linkers in the case >>>> of scientific packages. >>>> >>>> Virtualenv simply gives you a sandbox to play in to isolate at least >>>> the Python parts of the ridiculous amount of work. The ironic thing about >>>> pointing at virtualenv.org is that the first three points on the front >>>> page under the installation section are version dependency warning. >>>> >>>> see http://goo.gl/IzI1i >>>>> >>>> >>>> The ironic thing about that link (a Google search for python pip >>>> virtualenv scientific computing) is that the top two links are about the >>>> problems pip and virtualenv have trying to install the Python scientific >>>> stack. >>>> >>>> The first sentence in the first link was, "For whatever reason, it can >>>> be a big pain to get python set up correctly on Mac OS X." Later on it goes >>>> on to say, "Next is the tedious process of downloading and installing >>>> packages. Unfortunately some of them do not play well with pip and need to >>>> be built from the latest source code explicitly. Others simply take a long >>>> time to build and you may want to avoid repeating the build when creating a >>>> new python virtual environment. Still others don’t build well and need to >>>> be installed using pip. Good times." >>>> >>>> The second link goes on about how, "Now, we would like to install >>>> matplotlib, which is a 2-D plotting library for Python. Now Matplotlib is >>>> not very friendly with pip/easy_install on many systems. So, we will >>>> install from source." >>>> >>>> >>>> -- >>>> Sincerely, >>>> >>>> Chris Calloway http://nccoos.org/Members/cbc >>>> office: 3313 Venable Hall phone: (919) 599-3530 >>>> mail: Campus Box #3300, UNC-CH, Chapel Hill, NC 27599 >>>> >>> >>> >>> >>> -- >>> Some radio waves were modulated in the creation of this email. >>> >> >> > -- Maria Mckinley Software Developer with Bonus SysAdmin Experience www.mariakathryn.net www.linkedin.com/in/mariamckinley
