Trouble installing NumPy in virtualenv on Ubuntu 14.04

Posted on May 5, 2014

Yesterday was my first day using DigitalOcean. I set up Ubuntu v. 14.04, cloned the repository my colleague and I are working on, and tried to install all the required Python modules and non-Python dependencies, but there were problems with NumPy that I could not resolve. I have not used Ubuntu in some months, but I normally use pip for almost all Python installations, within a virtualenv virtual environment, and install the many dependencies using apt-get.

I remember that NumPy often presents problems. This time it seemed impossible to make NumPy compile. Installing with root privileges succeeded, but then NumPy was not available within the virtualenv environment.

I have now installed the Anaconda distribution, instead, so that I can move forward, but I’d be glad to hear of suggestions for effective NumPy installation using pip within a virtual environment.

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Andrew SB

May 5, 2014

Without seeing the error, it’s hard to say exactly what went wrong. Though one thing to remember is that installing numpy with pip requires compiling C code, so you need gcc and Python’s developmental headers around: apt-get install python-dev build-essential Also, if you want your virtualenv to be able to access packages installed through apt, create it using: virtualenv --system-site-packages your_enev