[AstroPy] Importing packages across distributions?

[Thomas Robitaille]

Hi Eric,

CASA uses it's own Python installation, which is separate from
Anaconda and other distributions. While it's possible to mess with
PYTHONPATH to make CASA and other Python distributions see the same
packages, it's kind of a hack. Instead, the easiest way (in my
opinion) to install Python packages into CASA is to use the script
I've written and made available here:

https://github.com/astrofrog/casa-python

In fact, the README shows you how to install Astropy into CASA.

Let me know if you have any trouble installing it.

Cheers,
Tom


On 6 May 2013 23:22, Eric L. N. Jensen <ejensen1 at swarthmore.edu> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> First, thanks for your answers to my previous question about an easy-to-install python distribution - I ended up installing anaconda.
>
> My next question is most likely a pretty elementary bit of python, but I haven't succeeded in finding a discussion of it: to what extent are packages installed under one distribution's tree importable by another distribution?  I had thought/hoped that after installing anaconda (with its rich collection of auxiliary packages) that I might be able to do the following within CASA (with has its own python installation):
>
>    sys.path.append('/Users/ejensen1/anaconda')
>
>    from astropy import coordinates as coord
>
> but that fails with "No module named astropy".    The situation is similar if I can start up the Mac OS system-distributed python, so it's not just a CASA thing.
>
> So my specific question is whether this sort of thing is ever possible (simply importing a module from somewhere else in a directory tree), and more generally where to find some documentation / discussion of this issue - all the discussions I've found so far (probably not searching on the right words) imply that importing modules is simply a matter of setting the path correctly, but it's clearly more complicated than that.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Eric
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> AstroPy mailing list
> AstroPy at scipy.org
> http://mail.scipy.org/mailman/listinfo/astropy