[Numpy-discussion] Should I use pip install numpy in linux?

[Chris Barker]

hmm -- didn't mean to rev this up quite so much -- sorry!

But it's a good conversation to have, so...


On Fri, Jan 15, 2016 at 1:08 PM, Benjamin Root <ben.v.root at gmail.com> wrote:

> That being said... I take exception to your assertion that anaconda is
> *the* solution to the packaging problem.
>

I think we need to keep some things straight here:

 "conda" is a binary package management system.

"Anaconda" is a python (and other stuff) distribution, built with conda.

In practice, everyone ( I know of ) uses the Anaconda distribution (or at
least the default conda channel) when using conda, but in theory, you could
maintain your an entirely distinct distribution with conda as the tool.

Also in practice, conda is so easy because continuum has done the hard work
of building a lot of the packages we all need -- there are still a lot
being maintained by the community in various ways, but frankly, we do
depend on continuum for all the hard work. But working on/with conda does
not lock you into that if you think it's not serving your needs.

And this discussion, (for me anyway) is about tools and the way forward,
not existing packages.

So onward!


> I still have a number of issues, particularly with the interactions of
> GDAL, shapely, and Basemap (they all seek out libgeos_c differently), and I
> have to use my own build of GDAL to enable many of the features that we use
> (the vanilla GDAL put out by Continuum just has the default options, and is
> quite limited).
>

Yeah, GDAL/OGR is a F%$#ing nightmare -- and I do wish that Anaconda had a
better build, but frankly, there is no system that's going to make that any
easier -- do any of the Linux distros ship a really good compatible, up to
date set of these libs -- and OS-X and Windows? yow! (Though Chris Gohlke
is a wonder!)


> If I don't set up my environment *just right* one of those packages will
> fail to import in some way due to being unable to find their particular
> version of libgeos_c. I haven't figure it out exactly why this happens, but
> it is very easy to break such an environment this way after an update.
>

Maybe conda could be improved to make this easier, I don't know (though do
checkout out the IOOS channel on anaconda.org Filipe has done some nice
work on this)



>  In a clutch, we had our IT staff manually build mod_wsgi against
> anaconda's python, but they weren't too happy about that, due to mod_wsgi
> no longer getting updated via yum.
>

I'm not sure how pip helps you out here, either. Sure for easy-to-compile
from source packages, you can just pip install, and you'll get a package
compatible with your (system) python. But binary wheels will give you the
same headaches -- so you're back to expecting your linux dstro to provide
everything, which they don't :-(

I understand that the IT folks want everything to come from their OS vendor
-- they like that -- but it simply isn't practical for scipy-based web
services. And once you've got most of your stack coming from another
source, is it really a big deal for python to come from somewhere else also
(and apache, and ???) -- conda at least is a technology that _can_ provide
an integrated system that includes all this -- I don't hink you're going to
be pip-installling apache anytime soon! (or node, or ???)


> If anaconda was the end-all, be-all solution, then it should just be a
> simple matter to do "conda install mod_wsgi". But the design of conda is
> that it is intended to be a user-space package-manager.
>

Then you can either install it as the web user (or apache user), or install
it as a system access. I haven't done this, but I don't think it all that
hard -- you're then going to need to sudo to install/upgrade anything new,
but that's expected.

So, again, I love conda for what it can do when it works well. I only take
> exception to the notion that it can address *all* problems, because there
> are some problems that it just simply isn't properly situated for.
>

But pip isn't situated for any of these either -- I'm still confused as to
the point here.

-CHB



-- 

Christopher Barker, Ph.D.
Oceanographer

Emergency Response Division
NOAA/NOS/OR&R            (206) 526-6959   voice
7600 Sand Point Way NE   (206) 526-6329   fax
Seattle, WA  98115       (206) 526-6317   main reception

Chris.Barker at noaa.gov
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/numpy-discussion/attachments/20160119/39bdbfab/attachment.html>