installing numpy

[Raymond L. Buvel]

Gary Wessle wrote:
> Robert Kern <robert.kern at gmail.com> writes:
> 
> 
>>Raymond L. Buvel wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Since you are a new Linux user, you should definitely follow Robert's
>>>advice about building as an ordinary user separately from the install.
>>>I sometimes take a shortcut and just do the install as user root.
>>>However, I then wind up cleaning out the build directory as user root
>>>(not a very safe thing to do).
>>
>>For small, pure Python packages, that may be fine. numpy's build is complicated
>>enough that you really, *really* want to build as a regular user.
>>
>>-- 
>>Robert Kern
> 
> 
> I have read as much as I can form the python installation manual.
> as a regular user, I created a personal configuration file here
> 
> ****************
> :~$ cat .pydistutils.cfg 
> [install]
> prefix=/usr/local
> ****************
> 
> now to build as a regular user, I am getting some errors
> 
> ****************************************************************
> $ cd numpy-0.9.6
> $ python setup.py build
> Running from numpy source directory.
> Warning: not existing path in numpy/distutils: site.cfg
> F2PY Version 2_2236
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "setup.py", line 76, in ?
>     setup_package()
>   File "setup.py", line 63, in setup_package
>     config.add_subpackage('numpy')
>   File "/home/fred/numpy-0.9.6/numpy/distutils/misc_util.py", line 592, in add_s                                                               ubpackage
>     config_list = self.get_subpackage(subpackage_name,subpackage_path)
>   File "/home/fred/numpy-0.9.6/numpy/distutils/misc_util.py", line 582, in get_s                                                               ubpackage
>     subpackage_path)
>   File "/home/fred/numpy-0.9.6/numpy/distutils/misc_util.py", line 539, in _get_                                                               configuration_from_setup_py
>     config = setup_module.configuration(*args)
>   File "/home/fred/numpy-0.9.6/numpy/setup.py", line 10, in configuration
>     config.add_subpackage('core')
>   File "/home/fred/numpy-0.9.6/numpy/distutils/misc_util.py", line 592, in add_s                                                               ubpackage
>     config_list = self.get_subpackage(subpackage_name,subpackage_path)
>   File "/home/fred/numpy-0.9.6/numpy/distutils/misc_util.py", line 582, in get_s                                                               ubpackage
>     subpackage_path)
>   File "/home/fred/numpy-0.9.6/numpy/distutils/misc_util.py", line 539, in _get_                                                               configuration_from_setup_py
>     config = setup_module.configuration(*args)
>   File "numpy/core/setup.py", line 11, in configuration
>     from numpy.distutils.system_info import get_info, default_lib_dirs
>   File "/home/fred/numpy-0.9.6/numpy/distutils/system_info.py", line 151, in ?
>     so_ext = get_config_vars('SO')[0] or ''
>   File "/usr/lib/python2.4/distutils/sysconfig.py", line 488, in get_config_vars
>     func()
>   File "/usr/lib/python2.4/distutils/sysconfig.py", line 358, in _init_posix
>     raise DistutilsPlatformError(my_msg)
> distutils.errors.DistutilsPlatformError: invalid Python installation: unable to                                                                open /usr/lib/python2.4/config/Makefile (No such file or directory)

I think this is another example where you don't have the -dev package
you need installed on your system.  In order to build just about
anything that requires header files on a Debian system, you need to
install the -dev packages.  Debian usually packages things into a
package for regular users and another package of the same name with a
-dev suffix for developers.  In this case, it looks like distutils is
complaining about a missing Makefile.  But this is just the start of the
problems.  Checking on my system, it looks like you need to install the
python2.4-dev package.  Note that installing python-dev won't work in
your case since that is for the default Python which is still Python2.3
in Debian testing.

Using NumPy as your first introduction to building Python extension
modules is a real challenge.

Good luck!
Ray Buvel