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Installation

dipy is in active development. You can install it from our latest release, but you may find that the release has gotten well behind the current development - at least - we hope so - if we’re developing fast enough!

If you want install the latest and greatest from the bleeding edge of the development, skip to Installing from source. If you just want to install a released version, read on for your platform.

Installing a release

If you are on Debian or Ubuntu Linux we recommend you try Using packages: first. Otherwise please try Using pip:.

Using packages:

Windows

  1. To use dipy, you will need to install a few Dependencies. One simple way to get the dependencies on your machine, is to install the Anaconda python distribution, following the instructions on their website. Note that there are alternatives to Anaconda. See below for Alternatives to Anaconda.

  2. You will still need to install the nibabel library, which supports reading and writing of neuroimaging data formats. You can install it from a binary installer on the nibabel pypi web page. Download the .exe installer in the table at the bottom and double-click it to launch the installation process.

  3. Similarly, you can install dipy itself from the dipy pypi web-page. Download the .exe installer in the table at the bottom of the page and double-click it to launch the installation.

  4. Now, you should be able to start using dipy. From a python console or script try

    >>> import dipy
    

There are other alternatives than the one we have outlined above to installing the dependencies and to install nibabel and dipy. In particular, you can use pip or easy_install from the Anaconda Command Prompt (which you can launch from the Start Menu), To do that, you would replace the instructions above with typing the following at the command prompt

pip install nibabel
pip install dipy

or

easy_install nibabel
easy_install dipy

OSX

  1. To use dipy, you need to have some Dependencies installed. First of all, make sure that you have installed the Apple Xcode developer tools. You’ll need those to install all the following dependencies.

  2. Next, install the python library dependencies. One easy way to do that is to use the Anaconda distribution (see below for Alternatives to Anaconda).

  3. Even with Anaconda installed, you will still need to install the nibabel library, which supports reading and writing of neuroimaging data formats. Open a terminal and type

    pip install nibabel
  4. Finally, we are ready to install ‘dipy` itself. Same as with nibabel above, we will type at the terminal shell command line

    pip install dipy

When the installation has finished we can check if it is successful in the following way. From a Python console script try

>>> import dipy

This should work with no error.

Linux

For Debian, Ubuntu and Mint set up the NeuroDebian repositories - see NeuroDebian how to. Then:

sudo apt-get install python-dipy

We hope to get packages for the other Linux distributions, but for now, please try Using pip: instead.

Using pip:

This method should work under Linux, Mac OS X and Windows.

Please install numpy and scipy using their respective binary installers if you haven’t already.

For Windows and Mac OSX you can use Anaconda to get numpy, scipy, cython and lots of other useful python module. Anaconda is a big package but will install many tools and libraries that are useful for scientific processing.

When you have numpy, scipy and cython installed then try

pip install nibabel
pip install dipy

Then from any python console or script try

>>> import dipy

Support

Contact us:

Do these installation instructions work for you? For any problems/suggestions please let us know by sending us an e-mail to the nipy mailing list with the subject line starting with [dipy].

Common problems:

Multiple installations

Make sure that you have uninstalled all previous versions of Dipy before installing a new one. A simple and general way to uninstall Dipy is by removing the installation directory. You can find where Dipy is installed by using:

import dipy
dipy.__file__

and then remove the Dipy directory that contains that file.

Alternatives to Anaconda

If you have problems installing Anaconda we recommend using Canopy or pythonxy.

Memory issues

Dipy can process large diffusion datasets. For this reason we recommend using a 64bit operating system which can allocate larger memory chunks than 32bit operating systems. If you don’t have a 64bit computer that is okay Dipy works with 32bit too.

Note on python versions

Dipy supports python 2.6+ and python 3+. We started supporting Python 3 from version dipy.0.7.0.

Installing from source

Getting the source

More likely you will want to get the source repository to be able to follow the latest changes. In that case, you can use:

git clone https://github.com/nipy/dipy.git

For more information about this see Following the latest source.

After you’ve cloned the repository, you will have a new directory, containing the dipy setup.py file, among others. We’ll call this directory - that contains the setup.py file - the dipy source root directory. Sometimes we’ll also call it the <dipy root> directory.

Building and installing

Windows

Anaconda is probably the easiest way to install the dependencies that you need.

Start a command shell like cmd or Powershell and change directory into the dipy source root directory.

To install into your system:

python setup.py install --compiler=mingw32

To install inplace - so that dipy is running out of the source code directory:

python setup.py develop

(this is the mode we recommend for following the latest source code). If you get an error with python setup.py develop make sure you have installed setuptools.

If you get an error saying “unable to find vcvarsall.bat” then you need to create a file called “pydistutils.cfg” in notepad and give it the contents

[build]
compiler=mingw32

Save this into your system python distutils directory as distutils.cfg. This will be something like C:\Python26\Lib\distutils\distutils.cfg.

OSX

Make sure you have Xcode and Anaconda installed.

From here follow the Install from source for Unix (e.g Linux, OSX) instructions.

Ubuntu/Debian

sudo apt-get install python-dev python-setuptools
sudo apt-get install python-numpy python-scipy
sudo apt-get install cython

then:

sudo pip install nibabel

(we need the latest version of these two - hence easy_install rather than apt-get).

You might want the optional packages too (highly recommended):

sudo apt-get install ipython python-tables python-vtk python-matplotlib

Now follow Install from source for Unix (e.g Linux, OSX).

Fedora / Mandriva maybe Redhat

Same as above but use yum rather than apt-get when necessary.

Now follow Install from source for Unix (e.g Linux, OSX).

Install from source for Unix (e.g Linux, OSX)

Change directory into the dipy source root directory .

To install for the system:

python setup.py install

To build dipy in the source tree (locally) so you can run the code in the source tree (recommended for following the latest source) run:

python setup.py build_ext --inplace

add the dipy source root directory into your PYTHONPATH environment variable. Search google for PYTHONPATH for details or see python module path for an introduction.

When adding dipy to the PYTHONPATH, we usually add the PYTHONPATH at the end of ~/.bashrc or (OSX) ~/.bash_profile so we don’t need to retype it every time. This should look something like:

export PYTHONPATH=/home/user_dir/Devel/dipy:/home/user_dir/Devel/nibabel

After changing the ~/.bashrc or (OSX) ~/.bash_profile try:

source ~/.bashrc

or:

source ~/.bash_profile

so that you can have immediate access to dipy without needing to restart your terminal.

Testing

If you want to run the tests:

sudo pip install nose

Then (in python or ipython):

>>> import dipy
>>> dipy.test()

You can also run the examples in <dipy root>/doc.

Documentation (Unix only)

To build the documentation in HTML in your computer you will need to do:

sudo pip install sphinx

Then change directory to <dipy root> and:

cd doc
make clean
make html