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Installing python and friends on a mac

  1. Get the latest python interpreter and some packages from here [from a pointer on python.org]
  2. To get matplotlib installed you will need pytz and dateutil, both found on the above mentioned page [pythonmac.org].
  3. SciPy is notably missing - get the source and the fortran compiler from here and compile as acc to the instructions.
  4. There are several IDEs, I'm giving eclipse and xcode a whirl. This [showmedo] is an excellent video tutorial on how to get PyDev for eclipse all set up. Also see this for PyDev installation. PyDev has a really annoying nag screen now. I'm stopping using it.
  5. Eclipse does not play sensibly with matplotlib - I'm using ipython to actually run the scripts and eclipse for the editing environment. Eclipse beats Xcode because eclipse will layout your methods and classes for browsing (like pyscripter).
  6. Marxy has some scripts for Python on Xcode here.
  7. ipython should be installed from source as detailed here.
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Comments

  1. NickCJune 3, 2008 at 1:11 PM

    so were you able to get MatPlotLib,NumPy and SciPy all to work with 2.5 on the Mac? I tried MacPython.org, Fink and MacPorts and in all cases couldn't get it all working with 2.5. In the end I chose to stick with MacPorts and roll back to Python2.4, no problems since, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't prefer to be using 2.5.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Kaushik GhoseJune 3, 2008 at 5:13 PM

    Yes. I'm on Mac OS 10.5. I got it to work using the steps I wrote down here

    ReplyDelete

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