Developing on linux

Sketch of the steps to get up and running on linux to make binary releases for python packages. This is my personal setup.

My systems

• Many. Currently I’m working on an Ubuntu Lucid 64 bit system:

  $ uname -a
  Linux angela 2.6.32-28-generic #55-Ubuntu SMP Mon Jan 10 23:42:43 UTC 2011 x86_64 GNU/Linux
  

Basic setup

sudo apt-get install git-core
sudo apt-get install python-dev python-numpy python-scipy

• Install personal setup:

  git clone git@github.com:matthew-brett/myconfig.git
  cd myconfig
  make dotfiles
  cd ..
  

  Then edit ~/.bashrc to add the commented lines at the top of your new ~/.bash_personal file. Then set up vim:

  git clone git@github.com:matthew-brett/myvim.git
  cd myvim
  sudo apt-get install ruby ruby-dev # for command-t
  make command-t
  make links
  

Setting up virtualenvs

• Install virtualenv, and virtualenvwrapper. I did this with:

  sudo apt-get install python-setuptools
  sudo easy_install virtualenvwrapper
  

  I did this because there is was an incompatibility with Maverick Python 2.7 and Maverick virtualenv - see this bug report. For Natty (next after Maverick), you can probably use:

  sudo apt-get install virtualenvwrapper
  

  instead.

• If you are using my config (above), you probably want my default environment cleanup for virtualenvs:

  cd myconfig
  make virtualenvs
  

• Make some good virtualenvs, with commands like:

  mkvirtualenv python25 --python=python2.5
  

  If you have to do something really bare, consider the no-site-packages flag to the mkvirtualenv command.

  You’ll probably want other versions of python for your virtualenvs. This:

  sudo apt-get install python2.7 python2.7-dev
  

  works on Ubuntu Maverick (10.10). You might want to use the old and new python versions repository to get e.g python 2.5 on new Ubuntus:

  sudo add-apt-repository ppa:fkrull/deadsnakes
  sudo apt-get update
  sudo apt-get install python2.5 python2.5-dev
  

  You may have to compile numpy and scipy from source for your non-system python versions:

  sudo apt-get build-dep python-numpy
  mkdir code
  cd code
  git clone git://github.com/numpy/numpy.git
  cd numpy
  git co v1.5.1 # a tag
  sudo python2.5 setup.py install
  sudo rm -rf build
  sudo python2.7 setup.py install
  cd ..
  # This will soon become a real git repo rather than an svn mirror
  git clone --origin svn git://github.com/scipy/scipy-svn.git scipy
  cd scipy
  git co svn/tags/v0.9.0rc4 # a tag
  sudo python2.5 setup.py install
  sudo rm -rf build
  sudo python2.7 setup.py install
  

  For the remaining packages, we can use setuptools. As per the instructions on old and new python versions

  sudo apt-get install python-setuptools-deadsnakes
  

  then (e.g.):

  sudo easy_install-2.5 nose