Good one! Didn't see that coming :-)
On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 5:22 PM, Maria McKinley <[email protected]>wrote: > 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 >
