vaex binary installation in windows - python

Installing Python packages can be as frustrating as it can be. Maybe I am the only poor pathetic who still stucks in Windows and the world is living their world happily in Mac and Linux
I am trying to install vaex in my venv environment in Windows. But I got the following unmovable enterprise obstacles:
pip install is not possible as I am unable to install the Visual C++ Build Tools which requires admin rights
Direct Git download or clone do require Visual C++ Build Tool
Conda only up-to version 4.3 which I am not allow to set the proxy when I try to use the conda-forge channel to install
Conda 4.3 is not accepting proxy server settings via command line. There is no way I am able to make conda to use .condarc file. The solution I was proposed is to upgrade to 4.4 which I am not able to do that
Other dependencies pop-up when I try to upgrade conda to 4.4. conda upgrade conda forces me into a whole list of packages that I need to upgrade/install along where I was given no choice to select only conda
Or alternatively, what can I do to compile all the required elsewhere and repackage the whole package for installation?

You could build the wheel distribution of this project (and all its dependencies) on another Windows machine of the same bitness (32 or 64 bits) and with same (minor) version of the Python interpreter. This wheel distribution can then be reused on the target machine.

Related

How to use OpenCV in Python with VS as IDE

I have problems getting a project started. I want to work with the library OpenCV in Python, using Visual Studio 2017 as IDE (on windows 10). I added Python extensions (e.g. Anaconda3 64 Bit) to VS via the VS Installer. After that, the struggle begins. Someone told me, Anaconda would be nice to handle multiple packages, so I opened the Python IDE window and set Anaconda as default. Then in the same window I clicked on packages. After executing
conda install -c conda-forge opencv
conda install -c conda-forge/label/gcc7 opencv
conda install -c conda-forge/label/broken opencv
with the text field above the listed packages I was able to see the opencv package in that list. But when I tried to import opencv in a new python file, it didn't work. (The package was not found)
I also tried to download the latest OpenCV version on the official site, but there I got a folder. I navigated throught this folder and found some .pyd (python extension) files. Can I include them in VS?
I hope anyone can help, thanks in advance!
You can use/try/check the Python Environment Tab (View, Other Windows, Python Environment) to install stuff to any "environment" you have installed:
No idea if it is more comfy or not - I generally use that to install missing dependencies (using pypi - not conda) and the search input to check if it went ok:
I mostly use the python 3.6 for dev - so not much installed over anaconda defaults.
HTH

Python refactoring fails in Visual Studio Code

I switched to Visual Studio Code for Python programming recently. Below is my Python configuration in Visual Studio Code settings:
"python.pythonPath": "/Users/hzhang/.virtualenvs/env-2.7/bin/python",
"python.autoComplete.extraPaths": [
"/Users/hzhang/Work/xxx/shared_modules"
],
Basically, I just configure the Python interpreter and add one extra shared module path.
When I try to refactor a variable name, it throws this error which says rope is not installed, and it doesn't work even I install it. Based on my understanding, refactor variables is a feature of Visual Studio Code, and it shouldn't rely on any specific language.
How can I fix this problem?
Once I installed rope, refactor was still not working. It popups this error:
I am on Python 2.7
Visual Studio Code: Version 1.19.3 (1.19.3)
Rope version: 0.10.7
Renaming of variables is not a native Visual Studio Code feature for languages other than JavaScript and TypeScript.
It is specific to each language, and functionality is provided by separate extensions, specific to each language. The Python extension you have installed, uses the Rope library to perform refactoring/renaming of python variables and the like. So yes, you'll need to install it by closing in the Install rope button.
If you don't have the Install rope button, you can just go to cmd and type pip install rope. That should do the job as well.
If it doesn't work even after installing it, please could you file an issue on the Python extension GitHub repository.
Update from the filed bug: Anaconda users need to install the Anaconda package instead of the regular pip default install that Visual Studio Code provides.
This worked for me:
conda search rope # The latest right now is 0.11.0
conda install --name mypy27env rope
On Ubuntu, miniconda:
I had this issue using the "VSCode Python Plugin", when selecting "conda" install for rope.
I changed the active env with Terminal using "conda activate env". Then with "conda list", I saw Build Row was at value py_0 and at version 0.16.
I've chosen conda remove rope
Then, installing with pip (rope version 0.17.0): pip install rope
"conda list" gave me now pypi_0 as value in Build row
Restart VSCode
Summarize, one of this helped:
- Reinstalling rope with pip in the active conda environment
- Restarting VSCode

Installing librdkafka on Windows to support Python development

A little background: I am working on some python modules that other developers on our team will use. A common theme of each module is that one or more messages will be published to Kafka. We intend at this time to use the Confluent Kafka client. We are pretty new to python development in our organization -- we have traditionally been a .NET shop.
The complication: while the code that we create will run on Linux (rhel 7), most of the developers will do their work on Windows.
So we need the librdkafka C library compiled on each developer machine (which has dependencies of its own, one of which is OpenSSL). Then a pip install of confluent-kafka should just work, which means a pip install of our package will work. Theoretically.
To start I did the install on my Linux laptop (Arch). I knew I already had OpenSSL and the other zip lib dependencies available, so this process was painless:
git clone librdkafka repo
configure, make and install per the README
pip install confluent-kafka
done
The install of librdkafka went into /usr/local:
/usr/local/lib/librdkafka.a
/usr/local/lib/librdkafka++.a
/usr/local/lib/librdkafka.so -> librdkafka.so.l
/usr/local/lib/librdkafka++.so -> librdkafka++.so.l
/usr/local/lib/librdkafka.so.l
/usr/local/lib/librdkafka++.so.l
/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig/rdkafka.pc
/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig/rdkafka++.pc
/usr/local/include/librdkafka/rdkafkacpp.h
/usr/local/include/librdkafka/rdkafka.h
Now the painful part, making it work on Windows:
install precompiled OpenSSL
git clone librdkafka repo
open in VS2015
install libz via NuGet
build solution
install to where???
This is where I'm stuck. What would a standard install on a Windows 7/8/10 machine look like?
I have the following from the build output, but no idea what should go where in order to make the pip install confluent-kafka "just work":
/librdkafka/win32/Release/librdkafka.dll
/librdkafka/win32/Release/librdkafka.exp
/librdkafka/win32/Release/librdkafka.lib
/librdkafka/win32/Release/librdkafkacpp.dll
/librdkafka/win32/Release/librdkafkacpp.exp
/librdkafka/win32/Release/librdkafkacpp.lib
/librdkafka/win32/Release/zlib.dll
<and the .h files back in the src>
Any recommendations on an install location?
I'm not sure where the ideal place to install on Windows would be, but I ran the following test with some success.
I copied my output and headers to C:\test\lib and C:\test\include, then ran a pip install with the following options:
pip install --global-option=build_ext --global-option="-LC:\test\lib" --global-option="-IC:\test\include" confluent-kafka
Unfortunately, this doesn't quite work because the confluent-kafka setup does not support Windows at this time: https://github.com/confluentinc/confluent-kafka-python/issues/52#issuecomment-252098462
It's an old question but seems still no easy answer yet. Also Confluent seems too busy to work on Windows supporting...
I had the same headache couple weeks ago and after some research, I managed to make it work for me on Windows. I logged my finding and uploaded a pre-compiled library to my Git, please check and see if it helps. :D
https://github.com/MichaelZhangCA/confluent-kafka-python
My environment is Python 3.6 64 bit version but ideally, it should also work for 32 bit if you follow the same approach.
I assume you have successfully followed instructions from MichaelZhangCA (https://github.com/MichaelZhangCA/confluent-kafka-python/) from previous post.
If you did so, these probably were the last two commands executed:
::Install confluent-kafka
cd C:\confluent-kafka-python\confluent-kafka-python-0.11.4
python setup.py install
If that is correct, those DLLs were created under C:\confluent-kafka-python\librdkafka-reference\release\.
All you have to do is to copy them to a diretory already in Widnows' PATH.
For example, I use Anaconda 5.2 For Windows, with python 3.6. My Anaconda Prompt has an empty directory in PATH, so I copied there those DLL's:
::Anaconda Prompt - copy DLLs to a directory already in PATH
mkdir %CONDA_PREFIX%\Library\usr\bin
copy C:\confluent-kafka-python\librdkafka-reference\release %CONDA_PREFIX%\Library\usr\bin
If you don't use Anaconda, just copy those DLL's to any other directory in Windows' PATH. You may also leave them in C:\confluent-kafka-python\librdkafka-reference\release, and add this directory to PATH.

What is the difference between pip and conda?

I know pip is a package manager for python packages. However, I saw the installation on IPython's website use conda to install IPython.
Can I use pip to install IPython? Why should I use conda as another python package manager when I already have pip?
What is the difference between pip and conda?
Quoting from the Conda blog:
Having been involved in the python world for so long, we are all aware of pip, easy_install, and virtualenv, but these tools did not meet all of our specific requirements. The main problem is that they are focused around Python, neglecting non-Python library dependencies, such as HDF5, MKL, LLVM, etc., which do not have a setup.py in their source code and also do not install files into Python’s site-packages directory.
So Conda is a packaging tool and installer that aims to do more than what pip does; handle library dependencies outside of the Python packages as well as the Python packages themselves. Conda also creates a virtual environment, like virtualenv does.
As such, Conda should be compared to Buildout perhaps, another tool that lets you handle both Python and non-Python installation tasks.
Because Conda introduces a new packaging format, you cannot use pip and Conda interchangeably; pip cannot install the Conda package format. You can use the two tools side by side (by installing pip with conda install pip) but they do not interoperate either.
Since writing this answer, Anaconda has published a new page on Understanding Conda and Pip, which echoes this as well:
This highlights a key difference between conda and pip. Pip installs Python packages whereas conda installs packages which may contain software written in any language. For example, before using pip, a Python interpreter must be installed via a system package manager or by downloading and running an installer. Conda on the other hand can install Python packages as well as the Python interpreter directly.
and further on
Occasionally a package is needed which is not available as a conda package but is available on PyPI and can be installed with pip. In these cases, it makes sense to try to use both conda and pip.
Disclaimer: This answer describes the state of things as it was a decade ago, at that time pip did not support binary packages. Conda was specifically created to better support building and distributing binary packages, in particular data science libraries with C extensions. For reference, pip only gained widespread support for portable binary packages with wheels (pip 1.4 in 2013) and the manylinux1 specification (pip 8.1 in March 2016). See the more recent answer for more history.
Here is a short rundown:
pip
Python packages only.
Compiles everything from source. EDIT: pip now installs binary wheels, if they are available.
Blessed by the core Python community (i.e., Python 3.4+ includes code that automatically bootstraps pip).
conda
Python agnostic. The main focus of existing packages are for Python, and indeed Conda itself is written in Python, but you can also have Conda packages for C libraries, or R packages, or really anything.
Installs binaries. There is a tool called conda build that builds packages from source, but conda install itself installs things from already built Conda packages.
External. conda is an environment and package manager. It is included in the Anaconda Python distribution provided by Continuum Analytics (now called Anaconda, Inc.).
conda is an environment manager written in Python and is language-agnostic. conda environment management functions cover the functionality provided by venv, virtualenv, pipenv, pyenv, and other Python-specific package managers. You could use conda within an existing Python installation by pip installing it (though this is not recommended unless you have a good reason to use an existing installation). As of 2022, conda and pip are not fully aware of one another package management activities within a virtual environment, not are they interoperable for Python package management.
In both cases:
Written in Python
Open source (conda is BSD and pip is MIT)
Warning: While conda itself is open-source, the package repositories are hosted by Anaconda Inc and have restrictions around commercial usage.
The first two bullet points of conda are really what make it advantageous over pip for many packages. Since pip installs from source, it can be painful to install things with it if you are unable to compile the source code (this is especially true on Windows, but it can even be true on Linux if the packages have some difficult C or FORTRAN library dependencies). conda installs from binary, meaning that someone (e.g., Continuum) has already done the hard work of compiling the package, and so the installation is easy.
There are also some differences if you are interested in building your own packages. For instance, pip is built on top of setuptools, whereas conda uses its own format, which has some advantages (like being static, and again, Python agnostic).
The other answers give a fair description of the details, but I want to highlight some high-level points.
pip is a package manager that facilitates installation, upgrade, and uninstallation of python packages. It also works with virtual python environments.
conda is a package manager for any software (installation, upgrade and uninstallation). It also works with virtual system environments.
One of the goals with the design of conda is to facilitate package management for the entire software stack required by users, of which one or more python versions may only be a small part. This includes low-level libraries, such as linear algebra, compilers, such as mingw on Windows, editors, version control tools like Hg and Git, or whatever else requires distribution and management.
For version management, pip allows you to switch between and manage multiple python environments.
Conda allows you to switch between and manage multiple general purpose environments across which multiple other things can vary in version number, like C-libraries, or compilers, or test-suites, or database engines and so on.
Conda is not Windows-centric, but on Windows it is by far the superior solution currently available when complex scientific packages requiring compilation are required to be installed and managed.
I want to weep when I think of how much time I have lost trying to compile many of these packages via pip on Windows, or debug failed pip install sessions when compilation was required.
As a final point, Continuum Analytics also hosts (free) binstar.org (now called anaconda.org) to allow regular package developers to create their own custom (built!) software stacks that their package-users will be able to conda install from.
(2021 UPDATE)
TL;DR Use pip, it's the official package manager since Python 3.
pip
basics
pip is the default package manager for python
pip is built-in as of Python 3.0
Usage: python3 -m venv myenv; source myenv/bin/activate; python3 -m pip install requests
Packages are downloaded from pypi.org, the official public python repository
It can install precompiled binaries (wheels) when available, or source (tar/zip archive).
Compiled binaries are important because many packages are mixed Python/C/other with third-party dependencies and complex build chains. They MUST be distributed as binaries to be ready-to-use.
advanced
pip can actually install from any archive, wheel, or git/svn repo...
...that can be located on disk, or on a HTTP URL, or a personal pypi server.
pip install git+https://github.com/psf/requests.git#v2.25.0 for example (it can be useful for testing patches on a branch).
pip install https://download.pytorch.org/whl/cpu/torch-1.9.0%2Bcpu-cp39-cp39-linux_x86_64.whl (that wheel is Python 3.9 on Linux).
when installing from source, pip will automatically build the package. (it's not always possible, try building TensorFlow without the google build system :D)
binary wheels can be python-version specific and OS specific, see manylinux specification to maximize portability.
conda
You are NOT permitted to use Anaconda or packages from Anaconda repositories for commercial use, unless you acquire a license.
Conda is a third party package manager from conda.
It's popularized by anaconda, a Python distribution including most common data science libraries ready-to-use.
You will use conda when you use anaconda.
Packages are downloaded from the anaconda repo.
It only installs precompiled packages.
Conda has its own format of packages. It doesn't use wheels.
conda install to install a package.
conda build to build a package.
conda can build the python interpreter (and other C packages it depends on). That's how an interpreter is built and bundled for anaconda.
conda allows to install and upgrade the Python interpreter (pip does not).
advanced
Historically, the selling point of conda was to support building and installing binary packages, because pip did not support binary packages very well (until wheels and manylinux2010 spec).
Emphasis on building packages. Conda has extensive build settings and it stores extensive metadata, to work with dependencies and build chains.
Some projects use conda to initiate complex build systems and generate a wheel, that is published to pypi.org for pip.
easy_install/egg
For historical reference only. DO NOT USE
egg is an abandoned format of package, it was used up to mid 2010s and completely replaced by wheels.
an egg is a zip archive, it contains python source files and/or compiled libraries.
eggs are used with easy_install and the first releases of pip.
easy_install was yet another package manager, that preceded pip and conda. It was removed in setuptools v58.3 (year 2021).
it too caused a lot of confusion, just like pip vs conda :D
egg files are slow to load, poorly specified, and OS specific.
Each egg was setup in a separate directory, an import mypackage would have to look for mypackage.py in potentially hundreds of directories (how many libraries were installed?). That was slow and not friendly to the filesystem cache.
Historically, the above three tools were open-source and written in Python.
However the company behind conda updated their Terms of Service in 2020 to prohibit commercial usage, watch out!
Funfact: The only strictly-required dependency to build the Python interpreter is zlib (a zip library), because compression is necessary to load more packages. Eggs and wheels packages are zip files.
Why so many options?
A good question.
Let's delve into the history of Python and computers. =D
Pure python packages have always worked fine with any of these packagers. The troubles were with not-only-Python packages.
Most of the code in the world depends on C. That is true for the Python interpreter, that is written in C. That is true for numerous Python packages, that are python wrappers around C libraries or projects mixing python/C/C++ code.
Anything that involves SSL, compression, GUI (X11 and Windows subsystems), math libraries, GPU, CUDA, etc... is typically coupled with some C code.
This creates troubles to package and distribute Python libraries because it's not just Python code that can run anywhere. The library must be compiled, compilation requires compilers and system libraries and third party libraries, then once compiled, the generated binary code only works for the specific system and python version it was compiled on.
Originally, python could distribute pure-python libraries just fine, but there was little support for distributing binary libraries. In and around 2010 you'd get a lot of errors trying to use numpy or cassandra. It downloaded the source and failed to compile, because of missing dependencies. Or it downloaded a prebuilt package (maybe an egg at the time) and it crashed with a SEGFAULT when used, because it was built for another system. It was a nightmare.
This was resolved by pip and wheels from 2012 onward. Then wait many years for people to adopt the tools and for the tools to propagate to stable Linux distributions (many developers rely on /usr/bin/python). The issues with binary packages extended to the late 2010s.
For reference, that's why the first command to run is python3 -m venv myvenv && source myvenv/bin/activate && pip install --upgrade pip setuptools on antiquated systems, because the OS comes with an old python+pip from 5 years ago that's buggy and can't recognize the current package format.
Conda worked on their own solution in parallel. Anaconda was specifically meant to make data science libraries easy to use out-of-the-box (data science = C and C++ everywhere), hence they had to come up with a package manager specifically meant to address building and distributing binary packages, conda.
If you install any package with pip install xxx nowadays, it just works. That's the recommended way to install packages and it's built-in in current versions of Python.
Not to confuse you further,
but you can also use pip within your conda environment, which validates the general vs. python specific managers comments above.
conda install -n testenv pip
source activate testenv
pip <pip command>
you can also add pip to default packages of any environment so it is present each time so you don't have to follow the above snippet.
Quote from Conda for Data Science article onto Continuum's website:
Conda vs pip
Python programmers are probably familiar with pip to download packages from PyPI and manage their requirements. Although, both conda and pip are package managers, they are very different:
Pip is specific for Python packages and conda is language-agnostic, which means we can use conda to manage packages from any language
Pip compiles from source and conda installs binaries, removing the burden of compilation
Conda creates language-agnostic environments natively whereas pip relies on virtualenv to manage only Python environments
Though it is recommended to always use conda packages, conda also includes pip, so you don’t have to choose between the two. For example, to install a python package that does not have a conda package, but is available through pip, just run, for example:
conda install pip
pip install gensim
pip is a package manager.
conda is both a package manager and an environment manager.
Detail:
Dependency check
Pip and conda also differ in how dependency relationships within an environment are fulfilled. When installing packages, pip installs dependencies in a recursive, serial loop. No effort is made to ensure that the dependencies of all packages are fulfilled simultaneously. This can lead to environments that are broken in subtle ways, if packages installed earlier in the order have incompatible dependency versions relative to packages installed later in the order. In contrast, conda uses a satisfiability (SAT) solver to verify that all requirements of all packages installed in an environment are met. This check can take extra time but helps prevent the creation of broken environments. As long as package metadata about dependencies is correct, conda will predictably produce working environments.
References
Understanding Conda and Pip
Quoting from Conda: Myths and Misconceptions (a comprehensive description):
...
Myth #3: Conda and pip are direct competitors
Reality: Conda and pip serve different purposes, and only directly compete in a small subset of tasks: namely installing Python packages in isolated environments.
Pip, which stands for Pip Installs Packages, is Python's officially-sanctioned package manager, and is most commonly used to install packages published on the Python Package Index (PyPI). Both pip and PyPI are governed and supported by the Python Packaging Authority (PyPA).
In short, pip is a general-purpose manager for Python packages; conda is a language-agnostic cross-platform environment manager. For the user, the most salient distinction is probably this: pip installs python packages within any environment; conda installs any package within conda environments. If all you are doing is installing Python packages within an isolated environment, conda and pip+virtualenv are mostly interchangeable, modulo some difference in dependency handling and package availability. By isolated environment I mean a conda-env or virtualenv, in which you can install packages without modifying your system Python installation.
Even setting aside Myth #2, if we focus on just installation of Python packages, conda and pip serve different audiences and different purposes. If you want to, say, manage Python packages within an existing system Python installation, conda can't help you: by design, it can only install packages within conda environments. If you want to, say, work with the many Python packages which rely on external dependencies (NumPy, SciPy, and Matplotlib are common examples), while tracking those dependencies in a meaningful way, pip can't help you: by design, it manages Python packages and only Python packages.
Conda and pip are not competitors, but rather tools focused on different groups of users and patterns of use.
For WINDOWS users
"standard" packaging tools situation is improving recently:
on pypi itself, there are now 48% of wheel packages as of sept. 11th 2015 (up from 38% in may 2015 , 24% in sept. 2014),
the wheel format is now supported out-of-the-box per latest python 2.7.9,
"standard"+"tweaks" packaging tools situation is improving also:
you can find nearly all scientific packages on wheel format at http://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs,
the mingwpy project may bring one day a 'compilation' package to windows users, allowing to install everything from source when needed.
"Conda" packaging remains better for the market it serves, and highlights areas where the "standard" should improve.
(also, the dependency specification multiple-effort, in standard wheel system and in conda system, or buildout, is not very pythonic, it would be nice if all these packaging 'core' techniques could converge, via a sort of PEP)
(2022 UPDATE) This answer was derived from the one above by #user5994461
You can use pip for package management. Pip is the official built-in package manager for Python.org since Python 3.
pip is not a virtual environment manager.
pip
basics
pip is the default package manager for python
pip is built-in as of Python 3.0
Usage: python3 -m venv myenv; source myenv/bin/activate; python3 -m pip install requests
Packages are downloaded from pypi.org, the official public python repository
It can install precompiled binaries (wheels) when available, or source (tar/zip archive).
Compiled binaries are important because many packages are mixed Python/C/other with third-party dependencies and complex build chains. They MUST be distributed as binaries to be ready-to-use.
advanced
pip can actually install from any archive, wheel, or git/svn repo...
...that can be located on disk, or on a HTTP URL, or a personal pypi server.
pip install git+https://github.com/psf/requests.git#v2.25.0 for example (it can be useful for testing patches on a branch).
pip install https://download.pytorch.org/whl/cpu/torch-1.9.0%2Bcpu-cp39-cp39-linux_x86_64.whl (that wheel is Python 3.9 on Linux).
when installing from source, pip will automatically build the package. (it's not always possible, try building TensorFlow without the google build system :D)
binary wheels can be python-version specific and OS specific, see manylinux specification to maximize portability.
conda
conda is an open source environment manager AND package manager maintained by the open source community. It is separate from Anaconda, Inc. and does not require a commercial license to use.
conda is also bundled into Anaconda Navigator, a popular commercial Python distribution from Anaconda, Inc. Anaconda) that includes most common data science and Python developer libraries ready-to-use.
You will use conda when you use Anaconda Navigator GUI.
Packages may be downloaded from conda-forge, anaconda repo4, and other public and private conda package "channels" (aka repos).
It only installs precompiled packages.
conda has its own package format. It doesn't use wheels.
conda install to install a package.
conda build to build a package.
conda can build the python interpreter (and other C packages it depends on). That's how an interpreter is built and bundled for Anaconda Navigator.
conda allows to install and upgrade the Python interpreter (pip does not).
advanced
Historically, one selling point of conda was to support building and installing binary packages, because pip did not support binary packages very well (until wheels and manylinux2010 spec).
Emphasis on building packages. conda has extensive build settings and it stores extensive metadata, to work with dependencies and build chains.
Some projects use conda to initiate complex build systems and generate a wheel, that is published to pypi.org for pip.
conda emphasizes building and managing virtual environments. conda is by design a programming language-agnostic virtual environment manager. conda can install and manage other package managers such as npm, pip, and other language package managers.
Can I use Anaconda Navigator packages for commercial use?
The new language states that use by individual hobbyists, students, universities, non-profit organizations, or businesses with less than 200 employees is allowed, and all other usage is considered commercial and thus requires a business relationship with Anaconda. (as of Oct 28, 2020)
IF you are a large developer organization, i.e., greater than 200 employees, you are NOT permitted to use Anaconda or packages from Anaconda repository for commercial use, unless you acquire a license.
Pulling and using (properly open-sourced) packages from conda-forge repository do not require commercial licenses from Anaconda, Inc. Developers are free to build their own conda packages using the packaging tools provided in the conda-forge infrastructure.
easy_install/egg
For historical reference only. DO NOT USE
egg is an abandoned format of package, it was used up to mid 2010s and completely replaced by wheels.
an egg is a zip archive, it contains python source files and/or compiled libraries.
eggs are used with easy_install and the first releases of pip.
easy_install was yet another package manager, that preceded pip and conda. It was removed in setuptools v58.3 (year 2021).
it too caused a lot of confusion, just like pip vs conda :D
egg files are slow to load, poorly specified, and OS specific.
Each egg was setup in a separate directory, an import mypackage would have to look for mypackage.py in potentially hundreds of directories (how many libraries were installed?). That was slow and not friendly to the filesystem cache.
Funfact: The only strictly-required dependency to build the Python interpreter is zlib (a zip library), because compression is necessary to load more packages. Eggs and wheels packages are zip files.
Why so many options?
A good question.
Let's delve into the history of Python and computers. =D
Pure python packages have always worked fine with any of these packagers. The troubles were with not-only-Python packages.
Most of the code in the world depends on C. That is true for the Python interpreter, that is written in C. That is true for numerous Python packages, that are python wrappers around C libraries or projects mixing python/C/C++ code.
Anything that involves SSL, compression, GUI (X11 and Windows subsystems), math libraries, GPU, CUDA, etc... is typically coupled with some C code.
This creates troubles to package and distribute Python libraries because it's not just Python code that can run anywhere. The library must be compiled, compilation requires compilers and system libraries and third party libraries, then once compiled, the generated binary code only works for the specific system and python version it was compiled on.
Originally, python could distribute pure-python libraries just fine, but there was little support for distributing binary libraries. In and around 2010 you'd get a lot of errors trying to use numpy or cassandra. It downloaded the source and failed to compile, because of missing dependencies. Or it downloaded a prebuilt package (maybe an egg at the time) and it crashed with a SEGFAULT when used, because it was built for another system. It was a nightmare.
This was resolved by pip and wheels from 2012 onward. Then wait many years for people to adopt the tools and for the tools to propagate to stable Linux distributions (many developers rely on /usr/bin/python). The issues with binary packages extended to the late 2010s.
For reference, that's why the first command to run is python3 -m venv myvenv && source myvenv/bin/activate && pip install --upgrade pip setuptools on antiquated systems, because the OS comes with an old python+pip from 5 years ago that's buggy and can't recognize the current package format.
Continuum Analytics (later renamed Anaconda, Inc.) worked on their own solution (released as Anaconda Navigator) in parallel. Anaconda Navigator was specifically meant to make data science libraries easy to use out-of-the-box (data science = C and C++ everywhere), hence they came up with a package manager specifically meant to address building and distributing binary packages, and built it into the environment manager, conda.
If you install any package with pip install xxx nowadays, it usually just works. pip is a recommended way to install packages that is built into current versions of Python.
To answer the original question,
For installing packages, PIP and Conda are different ways to accomplish the same thing. Both are standard applications to install packages. The main difference is the source of the package files.
PIP/PyPI will have more "experimental" packages, or newer, less common, versions of packages
Conda will typically have more well established packages or versions
An important cautionary side note: If you use both sources (pip and conda) to install packages in the same environment, this may cause issues later.
Recreate the environment will be more difficult
Fix package incompatibilities becomes more complicated
Best practice is to select one application, PIP or Conda, to install packages, and use that application to install any packages you need.
However, there are many exceptions or reasons to still use pip from within a conda environment, and vice versa.
For example:
When there are packages you need that only exist on one, and the
other doesn't have them.
You need a certain version that is only available in one environment
Can I use pip to install iPython?
Sure, both (first approach on page)
pip install ipython
and (third approach, second is conda)
You can manually download IPython from GitHub or PyPI. To install one
of these versions, unpack it and run the following from the top-level
source directory using the Terminal:
pip install .
are officially recommended ways to install.
Why should I use conda as another python package manager when I already have pip?
As said here:
If you need a specific package, maybe only for one project, or if you need to share the project with someone else, conda seems more appropriate.
Conda surpasses pip in (YMMV)
projects that use non-python tools
sharing with colleagues
switching between versions
switching between projects with different library versions
What is the difference between pip and conda?
That is extensively answered by everyone else.
pip is for Python only
conda is only for Anaconda + other scientific packages like R dependencies etc. NOT everyone needs Anaconda that already comes with Python. Anaconda is mostly for those who do Machine learning/deep learning etc. Casual Python dev won't run Anaconda on his laptop.
I may have found one further difference of a minor nature. I have my python environments under /usr rather than /home or whatever. In order to install to it, I would have to use sudo install pip. For me, the undesired side effect of sudo install pip was slightly different than what are widely reported elsewhere: after doing so, I had to run python with sudo in order to import any of the sudo-installed packages. I gave up on that and eventually found I could use sudo conda to install packages to an environment under /usr which then imported normally without needing sudo permission for python. I even used sudo conda to fix a broken pip rather than using sudo pip uninstall pip or sudo pip --upgrade install pip.

install python3 + lxml on windows

I would like to install python3 with lxml on windows 7.
There seems to be several versions available.
What's the best version/way to install?
By best I mostly mean the easiest.
Points if I don't have to compile anything.
I had the same problem locating the correct version. After several hours of confusion I finally found the windows binary for Python 3 at Christoph Gohlke's Unofficial Windows Binaries for Python Extension Packages website at UC, Irvine.
He truly has the A-Z of Python extensions, as long as it's available for Python. Anything one could want from the PIP installer to Chinese word segmentation, to a multi-taper Fourier spectral estimator. Beyond that it gets into biologic & scientific specialty extensions.
Use the current stable version of 3, 3.2.2. You can find a windows installer here http://python.org/ftp/python/3.2.2/python-3.2.2.msi that will install python for you.
Use the Python Package Index version of lxml: it has a windows installer specifically for Python 3.
http://pypi.python.org/packages/3.1/l/lxml/lxml-2.2.8.win32-py3.1.exe#md5=d1fb73a8596bb77e155cef7ae6b0bc53
Download and run the Python installer then download and run the lxml installer: it should be that easy.
No compilations and IMHO, the best way:
Mainly because the instructions below the most complete and still FAST to complete. On more than one occasions, using just the MSI and the LXML binaries, I've run into issues with the install breaking/getting gcc and mingw errors.
These instructions are for Windows7 or Windows8 with Python3.3.
However, they should work for various versions as the releases of python and other respective prerequisites change/evolve:
Install Python3.3:
Download the last release of Python3.3 (currently 3.3.5) from the downloads page HERE
Direct link for Win32 MSI installer -> HERE
Direct link for Win64 MSI installer -> HERE
Simply run the MSI to install python. It will register itself in the registry, and appear in Add/REmove Programs.
NOTE: my instructions that follow assume that you choose to install python to the default path of C:\python33\ when asked during the Python Installation Wizard
Add the C:\python33\ and C:\python33\scripts folders to the system path by adding those directories to the PATH environment variable from the Control Panel > System > Advanced System Settings link (Advanced Tab) > Environmental Variables (Button).
(OPTIONAL) Install OpenSSL:
Download Win32 OpenSSL page from HERE for your version of Windows and PC architecture
Download Visual C++ 2008 redistributables for your version of Windows and PC architecture
Download OpenSSL for your version of Windows and architecture (the regular version, not the light one)
Add the following (depending on your architecture) directory (or wherever you insalled to) to your PATH, the same way you added C:\python33 and C:\python33\scripts above:
32-bit: c:\openssl-win32\bin
64-bit: c:\openssl-win64\bin
Install Setuptools (get-pip.py should install Setuptools for you), but, just in case...
Download ez_setup.py HERE and save it in C:\python33\scripts
Run C:\python33\scripts> python ez_setup.py
Install PIP
Download get-pip.py from HERE and save it in C:\python33\scripts
Run C:\python33\scripts> python get-pip.py
Install LXML
Download LXML 3.3.3 from HERE for your version of Windows and PC architecture
Run the EXE file
The latest version of lxml (3.6.0) now supports the Wheel format, so there is no problem with installing it with pip:
pip install lxml
Worth noting that Python3 is only supported on Windows 7 up to version 3.8.6 - beyond that it fails to install with an error similar to the following in the Python log file:
[2490:291C][2020-11-14T14:22:21]e000: Windows 8.1 or later is required to continue installation
This is mentioned in the Python Releases for Windows download page:
Note that Python 3.9.0 cannot be used on Windows 7 or earlier.
[...]
Note that Python 3.8.6 cannot be used on Windows XP or earlier.
Hence if installing with Chocolatey, the following command is needed:
choco install python3 --version 3.8.6

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