So, how do I install software?

[davclark]

This page should probably have something on it. At a minimum, a link to the official docs.

[davclark]

Or alternatively, how do I ask to get software installed. In particular, it'd be good to have the latest python 3.4 (or latest - 0.0.1). And there is talk of the general BCE suite being installed somehow somewhere?

[davclark]

FYI, I've been trying to keep a list of the minimal core for scientific python in this file:

https://github.com/dlab-berkeley/collaboratool/blob/master/provisioning/packages/core-python-requirements.txt

[davclark]

The minimal enabling technology would be to support venvs with python 3. Enthought's "canopy" python distro allows layered chaining (and has backported venv to python 2). So, with canopy, you can easily build off of an existing venv, and just compile what's new - but I'm not sure about "regular" python 3.3+'s venv:

http://blog.enthought.com/general/venv-in-python-2-7-and-how-it-simplifies-life

"Regular" venv is included since py3.3:

https://docs.python.org/3/library/venv.html

[davclark]

Currently this works (updating .bash_profile to include $HOME/.local/bin in PATH):

module add python/2.7.8
wget https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py
python get-pip.py --user 
pip install --user requests

However, installing ipython fails, complaining that it requires python 2.7 or 3.3 or above... Numpy also won't install (my proxy for C packages). Various errors, including complaints about using the headers for the Intel compiler.

I'm going to stop working on this now until we talk - probably tomorrow?

[davclark]

Had a useful conversation with @aculich, and now understand that much software shows up hierarchically. For example, pandas shows up after module add python/2.7.8.

That should be salient, probably on Installing Software.

There's still an issue for advanced users. For this, I'd say good canonical examples would be: How do I install pytables with the most recent blosc compression library that supports LZ4 and Snappy? (details on the API once all this is installed are here.)

Down the road, another good candidate library would be blaze (e.g., from master as we implement some new features)? This also includes binary dependencies which will need to be compiled for the local env.