Installing the SciPy Stack¶
These are instructions for installing the full SciPy stack. For installing individual packages, such as NumPy and SciPy, see Windows packages below.
Scientific Python distributions¶
For most users, especially on Windows, the easiest way to install the packages of the SciPy stack is to download one of these Python distributions, which include all the key packages:
- Anaconda: A free distribution for the SciPy stack. Supports Linux, Windows and Mac.
- Enthought Canopy: The free and commercial versions include the core SciPy stack packages. Supports Linux, Windows and Mac.
- Python(x,y): A free distribution including the SciPy stack, based around the Spyder IDE. Windows only.
- WinPython: A free distribution including the SciPy stack. Windows only.
- Pyzo: A free distribution based on Anaconda and the IEP interactive development environment. Supports Linux, Windows and Mac.
Installing via pip¶
Mac and Linux users can install pre-built binary packages for the SciPy stack using pip. Pip can install pre-built binary packages in the wheel package format.
Note that you need to have Python and pip already installed on your system.
pip does not work well for Windows because the standard pip package index site, PyPI, does not yet have Windows wheels for some packages, such as SciPy.
To install via pip on Mac or Linux, first upgrade pip to the latest version:
python -m pip install --upgrade pip
Then install the SciPy stack packages with pip. We recommend a user install, using the --user flag to pip (note: don’t use sudo pip, that will give problems). This installs packages for your local user, and does not need extra permissions to write to the system directories:
pip install --user numpy scipy matplotlib ipython jupyter pandas sympy nose
For user installs, make sure your user install executable directory is on your PATH. Here are example commands for setting the user PATH:
Linux:
# Consider adding this at the end of your ~/.bashrc file
export PATH="$PATH:/home/your_user/.local/bin"
OSX:
# Consider adding this at the end of your ~/.bash_profile file
export PATH="$PATH:/Users/your_user/Library/Python/3.5/bin"
Replace your_user with your username, and “3.5” with your Python version.
Install systemwide via a Linux package manager¶
Users on Linux can quickly install the necessary packages from standard repositories for various distributions. These installations will be system-wide, and will be somewhat out of date compared to versions installed with pip.
The install commands for the most common Linux distributions are given here. For other distributions, search the default package repository for package names of individual packages in the SciPy stack.
Ubuntu & Debian¶
sudo apt-get install python-numpy python-scipy python-matplotlib ipython ipython-notebook python-pandas python-sympy python-nose
The versions in Ubuntu 12.10 or newer and Debian 7.0 or newer meet the current SciPy stack specification. Users might also want to add the NeuroDebian repository for extra SciPy packages.
Fedora¶
Fedora 22 and later:
sudo dnf install numpy scipy python-matplotlib ipython python-pandas sympy python-nose atlas-devel
The versions in Fedora 17 or newer meet the current SciPy stack specification.
Install systemwide via a Mac package manager¶
Macs (unlike Linux) don’t come with a package manager, but there are a couple of popular package managers you can install.
Windows packages¶
Windows does not have any package manager analogous to that in Linux, so installing one of the scientific Python distributions mentioned above is preferred. However, if that is not an option, Christoph Gohlke provides pre-built Windows installers for many Python packages, including all of the core SciPy stack, which work extremely well.
Individual source packages¶
You can build any of the SciPy packages from source, for instance if you want to get involved with development. This is easy for packages written entirely in Python, while others like NumPy require compiling C code. Refer to individual projects for more details.