Installing IPython

IPython can be installed in various ways depending on your operating system. For the terminal-based shell, there is a dependency on readline. The web notebook requires tornado and zmq.

In addition to installing IPython, we will install setuptools, which gives you the easy_install command. The easy_install command is the default, standard package manager for Python. pip can be installed once you have easy_install available. The pip command is similar to easy_install, and adds options such as uninstalling.

How to do it...

This section describes how IPython can be installed on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. It also describes how to install IPython and its dependencies with easy_install and pip, or from source.

• Installing IPython and setup tools on Windows: A binary Windows installer for Python 2 or Python 3 is available on the IPython website. Also see http://ipython.org/ipython-doc/stable/install/install.html#windows.

  Install setuptools with an installer from http://pypi.python.org/pypi/setuptools#files. Then install pip; for instance:

  cd C:\Python27\scripts
  python .\easy_install-27-script.py pip
  

• Installing IPython On Mac OS X: Install the Apple Developer Tools (Xcode) if necessary. Xcode can be found on the OSX DVDs that came with your Mac or App Store. Follow the easy_install/pip instructions, or the installing from source instructions provided later in this section.

• Installing IPython On Linux: Because there are so many Linux distributions, this section will not be exhaustive.

  • On Debian, type the following command:

    su – aptitude install ipython python-setuptools
    

  • On Fedora, the magic command is as follows:

    su – yum install ipython python-setuptools-devel
    

  • The following command will install IPython on Gentoo:

    su – emerge ipython
    

  • For Ubuntu, the install command is as follows:

    sudo apt-get install ipython python-setuptools
    

• Installing IPython with easy_install or pip: Install IPython and all the dependencies required for the recipes in this chapter with easy_install, using the following command:

  easy_install ipython pyzmq tornado readline
  

  Alternatively, you can first install pip with easy_install, by typing the following command in your terminal:

  easy_install pip
  

  After that, install IPython using pip, with the following command:

  sudo pip install ipython pyzmq tornado readline
  

• Installing from source: If you want to use the bleeding edge development version, then installing from source is for you.

  1. Download the latest tarball from https://github.com/ipython/ipython/downloads.

  2. Unpack the source code from the archive:

     tar xzf ipython-<version>.tar.gz
     

  3. If you have Git installed, you can clone the Git repository instead:

     $ git clone https://github.com/ipython/ipython.git
     

  4. Go to the ipython directory:

     cd ipython
     

  5. Run the setup script. This may require you to run the command with sudo, as follows:

     sudo setup.py install
     

How it works...

We installed IPython using several methods. Most of these methods install the latest stable release, except when you install from source, which will install the development version.