Hacker News Reader

Comment by superfx | Hacker News Reader

I wish they didn't bundle a python installation with it. I'd rather just try the frontend without potentially messing up my python installation.

View on HN

>I'd rather just try the frontend without potentially messing up my python installation.

That's exactly why the did bundle a python installation with it -- so it wont mess or be restricted by your system Python.

Would it be possible to have the option of using an existing python installation? I have project-specific conda environments, so it would be great if I could set which Python should be used.

Yes, I'm working on a good way to do this, this is high priority.

Given how IPython Notebook has been adopted, bundling is basically the only option. Its popularity is highest in the scientific-Python world, which has been Windows-focused because of the availability and ease-of-use of pre-built single-download stacks of Python plus all the relevant libraries (numpy, scipy, etc.).

Giving those folks the ability to use Macs too is a huge deal (and "just install things yourself" isn't really an option -- it's gotten better, but numpy and scipy have historically been the very devil to manually install on any platform other than Windows).

Anaconda/conda has made the scipy and numpy install process pretty pleasant on OSX. 'conda install scipy' just works the way you would expect.

http://conda.pydata.org/miniconda.html

I would even go a step further and say that probably more than 50% of scientists have a Mac laptop as their personal computer at this point. In DoD, I can't install anything in my office computer. So if I hadn't had iPython up and running on my mac, there's no way I'd have gotten to the point (over years) of going to present a project to the HPC guys on Monday.

Very, very glad Anaconda exists.

I don't think that was a reason for scientists to use windows. It maybe allowed those used to windows to keep using it. Or maybe you only mean it was reason to choose Windows over Mac?

Because on Linux, installing python with libraries has always been trivially automatic. My windows experiences have always been hunting the net for hopefully compatible installers from 7 different sources and hope it won't mess my python installation... And it always ends up constraining the version I can use.

- Python(x,y) was a step forward but stagnated on python 2.

- Sagemath, which bundles a huge collection of scientific software gave up on installing on Windows. To this day, their answer is a virtualbox linux image. (It's also been a strong reason for developing SageMath Cloud, so people don't need to install Sage at all.)

- Disclaimer: haven't tried Conda.

I think it's specifically meant NOT to interfere with your existing Python installation. Says so under 'Standalone'.

I am pretty sure they are using virutalenv or something similar so that the python version that comes with it is contained and doesn't overwrite or interfere with your system python.

The bundled Python is contained within the .app, it does not touch any other part of the system.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com