[pydata-outreach-staff] Laptop setup guide, and questions

[Asheesh Laroia]

On Wed, 12 Dec 2012, Vid wrote:

> On Wed, Dec 12, 2012 at 7:14 PM, Asheesh Laroia <asheesh at asheesh.org> wrote:
>> Status of the setup guide so far:
>>
>> * Discovered an un under-documented dependency on Cython -- the build from
>> git abruptly fails in the absence of Cython (it's in the README, but in the
>> 'optional' section, so I missed it) (all platforms)
>
> Not sure I understood, so I'm curious to know if you are building
> Cython from source for Linux?
>
> If yes, For Ubuntu/Debian, I'd suggest we keep it simple and ask
> people to use the package manager(apt-get/aptitude) route. It is
> tempting to go bleeding edge but most newbies would be turned off by
> gcc build errors.  ...and dont get me started on other dependencies
> like fortran and blas and ...nvm.
> It can take all week in dependency hell. Been there, done that *scary*

Yes, that's what I did initially on Debian. However, Debian (unstable) 
ships 0.15.1, and the build fails with that version.

http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=cython suggests that no 
released version of Ubuntu has a suitable version of Cython either, so the 
Linux install instructions will also have to include instructions on 
building Cython from source.

Dependency problems can be avoided in this case; it'll just require 
careful note-taking and careful writing on my part, which I can manage. 
We'll have to recommend using a virtualenv; I'll document that too.

-- Asheesh.