Installing third-party Python modules

We'll make a distinction between modules which are included as part of Python's standard library and modules which must be installed. In Python, the words module and library are used interchangeably. To install libraries, you either get them from the Python Package Index (PyPI) or in the case of a lot of geospatial modules, you download a specialized installer. PyPI acts as the official software repository for libraries and offers some easy-to-use setup programs, which simplify installing packages. You can use the easy_install program, which is especially good on Windows, or the pip program more commonly found on Linux and Unix systems. Once it's installed, you can then install third-party packages simply by running the following code:

easy_install <package name>

For installing pip, you run the following code:

pip install <package name>

Links will be provided to installers and instructions for packages not available on PyPI. You can manually...