• Installing_SciPy
• Mac_OS_X

Table of contents

These instructions describe how to install NumPy and SciPy from source. If you would rather install pre-built binaries, go to the Download page and install the packages linked from there. Note that to be able to use the binary installers you need to use a version of Python from python.org (and not the one Apple ships with OS X, or from Fink/MacPorts).

Python

Apple ships its own version of Python with OS X. However, we strongly recommend installing the [http://www.python.org/download/ official Python distribution].

Apple's Developer Tools

Apple's Developer Tools provide a number of key libraries, particularly the vecLib Framework , which includes BLAS and LAPACK. Install the most recent version from Apple's Developer Connection site (after free registration). The most recent version may also be included on your OS X installation CD. Ensure that all components are installed by choosing customize when available during the install process and selecting all optional packages - at least the X11 development tools and (on OS X 10.6 or lower) the 10.4 SDK.

FORTRAN

Though virtually any commercial C/C++ compiler may be used with SciPy, OS X come with GNU C compilers pre-installed. The only thing missing is the GNU FORTRAN compiler.

Binaries of gfortran (GNU F95, this is a version of the much awaited, free, open source, F95 compiler) are available from [http://r.research.att.com/tools/ this site] ([http://r.research.att.com/gfortran-4.2.3.dmg download universal binary)]. We strongly recommend to use this exact build, many other gfortran versions/builds have created problems in the past. On OS X 10.7 (Lion) the correct version is http://r.research.att.com/gfortran-lion-5666-3.pkg ( for Xcode 4.1 ) and http://r.research.att.com/tools/gcc-42-5666.3-darwin11.pkg ( for Xcode 4.2 or higher ) (also available through Homebrew).

Version-specific notes

This section notes only things specific to one version of OS X, the build instructions in "Obtaining and Building NumPy and SciPy" apply to all versions.

OS X 10.7 (Lion)

The default C compiler on Lion is llvm-gcc-4.2, which has so far proven to be problematic. We recommend to use gcc-4.2, or alternatively clang. The Fortran flag "-ff2c" has been reported to be necessary.

If you have the older version of XCode installed (4.1), then before building with gcc, do:

  $ export CC=gcc-4.2
  $ export CXX=g++-4.2
  $ export FFLAGS=-ff2c

gcc-4.2 is not included with the current version of XCode (4.2). So, if you have the current version of XCode then before building with gcc, the easiest thing is to do:

  $ export CC=clang
  $ export CXX=clang
  $ export FFLAGS=-ff2c

Alternatively, you may try installing gcc-4.2 manually, and then using the environment variables in the prior block.

OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard)

On OS X 10.6 the default gcc version is 4.2, while NumPy and SciPy need to be built with 4.0 (at least in combination with the Python from python.org). For gcc the correct version should be picked up automatically, for C++ code (only in SciPy) you should ensure that g++ and c++ default to 4.0.

  $ export CC=/usr/bin/gcc-4.0
  $ export CXX=/usr/bin/g++-4.0

A more permanent way to achieve this is to create symlinks

    $ ln -s /usr/bin/g++-4.0 g++
    $ ln -s /usr/bin/g++-4.0 c++

in a directory and add that to the front of your PATH.

When building with Python 2.5 on OS X 10.6 it is also necessary to do

    $ export CC=/usr/bin/gcc-4.0

Obtaining and Building NumPy and SciPy

You may install NumPy and SciPy either by checking out the source files from the Git repositories, or unpacking them from a source archive file from the Download page. If you choose the latter, simply expand the archive (generally a gzipped tar file), otherwise check out the following branches from the repository:

    $ git clone https://github.com/numpy/numpy.git
    $ git clone https://github.com/scipy/scipy.git

Both NumPy and SciPy are built as follows:

    $ python setup.py build
    $ python setup.py install

or, using scons,

    $ python setupscons.py scons --jobs=2

The above applies to the [http://www.python.org/download/ official Python distribution], which is 32-bit only for 2.5/2.6/3.1 while 32/64-bit bundles are available for 2.7 and 3.x. For alternative 64-bit Pythons (either from Apple or home-built) on Snow Leopard, you may need to extend your build flags to specify the architecture by setting LDFLAGS and FFLAGS.

Note that with distutils (setup.py) given build flags like LDFLAGS do not extend but override the defaults, so you have to specify all necessary flags. Only try this if you know what you're doing! Numscons does extend the flags, so you can for example use the build command:

LDFLAGS="-arch x86_64" FFLAGS="-arch x86_64" python setupscons.py scons

After a successful build, you may try running the built-in unit tests for SciPy:

    python
    >>> import numpy as np
    >>> np.test('full')
    >>> import scipy
    >>> scipy.test()

Be sure not to import numpy or scipy while you're in the numpy/scipy source tree. Change directory first.

If you have any problems installing SciPy on your Mac based on these instructions, please check the scipy-users and scipy-dev mailing list archives for possible solutions. If you are still stuck, feel free to join scipy-users for further assistance. Please have the following information ready:

• Your OS version
• The versions of gcc and gfortran and where you obtained gfortran

  • $ gcc --version

  • $ gfortran --version

• The versions of numpy and scipy that you are trying to install

• The full output of $ python setup.py build

Older notes

If you are missing readline support for your installation of Python, I recommend following these instructions for getting it installed with relative ease.

CategoryInstallation