[SciPy-user] Installing SciPy in user directory?

[Fernando Perez]

Pearu Peterson schrieb:
> On Tue, 9 Nov 2004, Yaroslav Bulatov wrote:

>>In particular I'm wondering if I can install SciPy into home
>>directory. There's a 2 year old thread describing how to do it with
>>Numeric, but has anyone done it with whole SciPy?
> 
> 
> No problem. You can either do it by
> 
>    python setup.py install --prefix=~
> 
> or
> 
>    python setup.py install --home=~

As a simple suggestion, here's how I handle this: I have a ~/usr directory 
which I can pass straight into --prefix=~/usr.  This has the advantage of 
having the entire substructure (bin/, lib/, share/, etc) of the system's /usr 
directory, and allows me to handle personal installs of stuff without 
cluttering my ~ dir with all these subdirs.

I even make a distinction between ~/usr and ~/usr/local: I use the first for 
things _I_ wrote (but which I don't want system-wide) and the latter for 
third-party software I install.  Sort of like the /usr vs /usr/local 
distinction made by most Linux distros.

Once this is in place, a few PATH/PYTHONPATH adjustments are all that's needed 
for a very smoothly running environment, which allows me to handle fairly 
complex user-specific installs with minimal hassles (and good isolation).

HTH,

f

ps. I'd _strongly_ suggest using --prefix instead of --home, since --prefix 
uses properly versioned python2.X subdirs.  This is critical for C extensions, 
whose magic API number changes with Python releases.