Installing Matplotlib

Matplotlib is a very useful plotting library, which we will need for the next recipe. It depends on NumPy, but in all likelihood you already have NumPy installed.

How to do it...

We will see how Matplotlib can be installed in Windows, Linux, and Mac, and also how to install it from source.

• Installing Matplotlib on Windows: Install with the Enthought distribution (http://www.enthought.com/products/epd.php).

  It might be necessary to put the msvcp71.dll file in your C:\Windows\system32 directory. You can get it from http://www.dll-files.com/dllindex/dll-files.shtml?msvcp71.

• Installing Matplotlib on Linux: Let's see how Matplotlib can be installed in the various distributions of Linux:

  • The install command on Debian and Ubuntu is as follows:

    sudo apt-get install python-matplotlib
    

  • The install command on Fedora/Redhat is as follows:

    su - yum install python-matplotlib
    

• Installing from source: Download the latest source from the tar.gz release at Sourceforge (http://sourceforge.net/projects/matplotlib/files/) or from the Git repository using the following command:

  git clone git://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib.git
  

  Once it has been downloaded, build and install as usual with the following command:

  cd matplotlib
  python setup.py install
  

• Installing Matplotlib on Mac: Get the latest DMG file from http://sourceforge.net/projects/matplotlib/files/matplotlib/, and install it.