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NOTE - UPDATE: While the following will install numpy 1.2.1, it’s perhaps not the best solution. If interested just inform yourself about the Apple system python as opposed to a standalone framework python installation.

That stuff bugged me for a while, now it seems as if I found a pretty decent solution to this.

Leopard comes with python 2.5.1 preinstalled and also includes numpy 1.0.1 (if I remember well). If you want to install something that uses a newer numpy (e.g., matplotlib) then you need to upgrade numpy. There are all these issues about the differing versions/distributions of python on Apple computers, I won’t dwell on that. If you don’t want to upgrade your python distribution that there’s an easier way:

1) Set the following symbolic link: (see http://wiki.python.org/moin/MacPython/Leopard)

cd /Library/Frameworks
sudo ln -s /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/ Python.framework

This allows you to use the ‘normal’ installer for numpy, see step 2.

2) Install the numpy 1.2.1 .dmg from here: Download NumPy

3) Your numpy installation ends up here:

/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/site-packages/

3.5) You may want to make a backup of the old numpy if there is one here:

/Library/Python/2.5/site-packages/ (just rename it, delete it, chmod 000 it, whatever)

4) Move it away from the Framework location:

cd /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/site-packages/
sudo mv numpy* /Library/Python/2.5/site-packages/

5) DONE:

hostname$ python
Python 2.5.1 (r251:54863, Jan 13 2009, 10:26:13)
[GCC 4.0.1 (Apple Inc. build 5465)] on darwin
Type “help”, “copyright”, “credits” or “license” for more information.
>>> import numpy
>>> numpy.__version__
‘1.2.1′
>>>

And that’s it! The next things now will be to get matplotlib to work, the easy_install does not yet want to work, but that has nothing to do with numpy anymore! This time it’s rather freetype2…

I just tried to install openbabel and its python wrapper pybel on a Mac running OS X 10.4. OpenBabel compiled fine from source, no problems with that. But when I tried to run python setup.py build in the scripts/python subdirectory, the build failed at the linking stage with

/usr/bin/ld: for architecture ppc
/usr/bin/ld: can't locate file for: -lopenbabel
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status


The solution turned out to be that—at least for my computer—I needed to set the environment variable OPENBABEL_INSTALL to /usr/local explicitly. Normally, the library is looked for in the src directory, i.e., where openbabel was built, but that didn’t work, for whatever reason (I haven’t checked up on that).

After setting the appropriate environment variable with export OPENBABEL_INSTALL=/usr/local everything works fine, the install as root finished without any problems, and everything works:

host:~/models/ flo$ python
Python 2.5 (r25:51918, Sep 19 2006, 08:49:13)
[GCC 4.0.1 (Apple Computer, Inc. build 5341)] on darwin
Type “help”, “copyright”, “credits” or “license” for more information.
>>> import pybel
>>>


Boot PowerPC Macs via USB 2.0 drives