Installing Glue¶
Note
If you are interested in installing the experimental 3D viewers, see the Experimental 3D viewers in Glue page after following the instructions below.
There are several ways to install Glue on your computer:
Recommended: Anaconda Python Distribution¶
Platforms: MacOS X, Linux, and Windows
We recommend using the Anaconda Python distribution from Continuum Analytics (or the related Miniconda distribution). Anaconda includes all of Glue’s main dependencies. There are two ways of installing Glue with the Anaconda Python Distribution: graphically using the Anaconda Launcher, or using the command-line, both of which are described below.
Graphical installation¶
Once you have installed the Anaconda Python Distribution, open the Anaconda Launcher, and you will be presented with a window that looks like the following:
As you can see, glue is already in the list (under the name glueviz). However, we need to tell Anaconda to get the latest version of glue from the conda-forge channel (the default version available is otherwise not the most recent). To do this, click on Manage Channels in the top right of the window, which will bring up a small window - type conda-forge into the field and click on Add Channel, then Submit:
Once you have done this, you can install glue by clicking on the Install button corresponding to the glueviz entry. If you have already installed glue, and want to update, you can click on the Update button.
Command-line installation¶
To install or update glue on the command-line, simply do:
conda install -c conda-forge glueviz
Note
There is currently a known issue when running Anaconda’s Qt on certain Linux distributions (including Kubuntu). See Issue with PyQt4 from conda for more details.
Enthought Canopy¶
Platforms: MacOS X, Linux, and Windows
The Enthought Python Distribution includes most but not all non-trivial dependencies.
You can install Glue using:
pip install glueviz
You can then install any additional (optional) Glue dependencies by running:
glue-deps install
on the command line. For more information on glue-deps
, see below
Standalone Application¶
Platforms: MacOS X
Mac users with OS X >= 10.7 can download Glue as a standalone program. This is the fastest way to get started with using Glue, but this application includes its own version of Python, and will not recognize any packages in other Python installations. If you want to use glue in your existing Python installation, follow instructions in the other sections.
Building from Source (For the Brave)¶
Platforms: MacOS X, Linux, and Windows
The source code for Glue is available on GitHub. Glue relies upon a number of scientific python libraries, as well as the Qt GUI library. Installing these packages is somewhat beyond the scope of this document, and unforunately trickier than it should be. If you want to dive in, here is the basic strategy:
- Install Qt 4 and either PyQt4 or PySide. If at all possible, use the binary installers; building PyQt4 or PySide from source is tricky (this is a euphemism).
- Install Glue using pip:
pip install glueviz
. Alternatively,git clone
the repository and install viapython setup.py install
- Install Glue’s remaining dependencies by running
glue-deps install
. For more information on these dependencies see below.
Dependencies¶
Glue has the following required dependencies:
- Python 2.7, or 3.3 and higher
- Numpy
- Matplotlib
- Pandas
- Either PyQt4 or PySide (or PyQt5, but support is still experimental)
And the following optional dependencies are also highly recommended:
In addition to these, there are several other optional dependencies to suport
various I/O and other optional functionality. Glue includes a command line
utility glue-deps
to manage dependencies:
- Calling
glue-deps list
displays all of Glue’s required and optional dependencies, along with whether or not each library is already installed on your system. For missing dependencies, the program also provides a brief description of how it is used within Glue. - Calling
glue-deps install
attempts topip install
all missing libraries. You can install single libraries or categories of libraries by providing additional arguments toglue-deps install
.
Tips for Ubuntu¶
Many dependencies can be reliably installed with apt
:
sudo apt-get install python-numpy
sudo apt-get install python-scipy
sudo apt-get install python-matplotlib
sudo apt-get install python-qt4
sudo apt-get install pyqt4-dev-tools
sudo apt-get install ipython
sudo apt-get install python-zmq
sudo apt-get install python-pygments
MacPorts¶
Many dependencies can be reliably installed with:
sudo port install python27
sudo port install py27-numpy
sudo port install py27-scipy
sudo port install py27-matplotlib
sudo port install py27-pyqt4
sudo port install py27-ipython
sudo port install py27-pip
For information about using MacPorts to manage your Python installation, see here
Running Glue¶
Installing glue from source will create a executable glue
script
that should be in your path. Running glue
from the command line will
start the program. Glue accepts a variety of command-line
arguments. See glue --help
for examples.
Note
On Windows, installation creates an executable glue.exe
file
within the python script directory (e.g., C:\Python27\Scripts
).
Windows users can create a desktop shortcut for this file, and run
Glue by double clicking on the icon.
Known issues¶
Issue with PyQt4 from conda¶
On certain Linux installations, when using Anaconda/conda to manage the Python installation you are using for glue, you may run into the following error when launching glue:
ImportError: /usr/lib/libkdecore.so.5: undefined symbol: _ZNK7QSslKey9algorithmEv
This is due to a known issue with Anaconda where the system installation of Qt is used instead of the version shipped with Anaconda (see this issue if you are interested in a discussion of the issue). A simple workaround is to force glue to use PySide insead of PyQt4:
conda install pyside
export QT_API=pyside
after which glue will use PySide when started.