6 ms·

Python Development on Linux and Why You Should Too

80 points by jeffreyfox 14y ago

lutusp 14y ago
A quote from the article: "Install this bad boy with the simple command sudo apt-get install python ..." Two things: 1. Fedora and related distribution users will want to say "yum -y install python" instead. 2. But it's hard to imagine a distribution that doesn't have Python installed by default, because so many Linux system utilities are written in Python. Another quote: "Alternatively, you can just start hacking away and use StackOverflow to fill in any of the gaps in your knowledge." Yes, good suggestion, but there's always the searchable online Python documentation: http://www.python.org/doc/ http://www.python.org/doc/ And if you're offline for any amount of time, the documentation can be downloaded: http://docs.python.org/download.html http://docs.python.org/download.html (2.x) http://docs.python.org/py3k/download.html http://docs.python.org/py3k/download.html (3.x) Python has some amazing libraries -- even symbolic algebra (what Mathematica does): from sympy import * x,a,b,c = var('x a b c') pprint(solve(a * x**2 + b * x + c,x), use_unicode=False) The result: _____________ / _____________\ / 2 | / 2 | -b + \/ -4*a*c + b -\b + \/ -4*a*c + b / [---------------------, -----------------------] 2*a 2*a The Unicode output is, of course, much nicer: http://i.imgur.com/fR7qO.png http://i.imgur.com/fR7qO.png
- icebraining 14y ago
  You can actually paste the Unicode output here: ⎡ ⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽ ⎛ ⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎞⎤ ⎢ ╱ 2 ⎜ ╱ 2 ⎟⎥ ⎢-b + ╲╱ -4⋅a⋅c + b -⎝b + ╲╱ -4⋅a⋅c + b ⎠⎥ ⎢─────────────────────, ───────────────────────⎥ ⎣ 2⋅a 2⋅a ⎦
  - TobbenTM 14y ago
    Well... http://i.imgur.com/Rxh63.png http://i.imgur.com/Rxh63.png
    - freehunter 14y ago
      That's interesting, it shows up perfectly for me in the comment (latest Firefox, Ubuntu 12.04).
      - chmike 14y ago
        Not on the iPad :(
    - icebraining 14y ago
      Your browser's monospace font isn't monospace. You should choose a different one.
      - sp332 14y ago
        If the monospace font doesn't support those characters, maybe the browser fell back to a non-monospace font.
        icebraining 14y ago
        No, if you look at the ASCII version posted above, it's distorted too (the big parenthesis are wrong, for example).
    - lutusp 14y ago
      Yes, I see the problem -- I assumed that other browsers were using a monospace font for the HN monospace-markup sections. This isn't always the case. Even my rendering in Google Chrome on Linux isn't perfect.
  - muyuu 14y ago
    You can, but most people will see little boxes all over the place.
    - icebraining 14y ago
      True, but in my opinion they should install fonts with decent unicode support anyway.
      - crisnoble 14y ago
        And how would one go about doing that on an iPhone?
- takluyver 14y ago
  And Sympy's output in the IPython notebook is even nicer: http://i.imgur.com/ldfLd.png http://i.imgur.com/ldfLd.png To enable that, run: %load_ext sympyprinting
  - thronemonkey 14y ago
    holy shit, did not know about this. This was really the one thing from Mathematica that I was still missing in iPython. Thank you!
- hntester123 14y ago
  Though your comment was not in reply to me, thanks for the above info. I knew about IPython but not about the IPython Notebook or the QtConsole. I just googled for IPython notebook and read some of that info, but can you give an example or two of what that style of working is useful for? Is it good for exploratory stuff?
antihero 14y ago
One thing I'd like to add/contradict. For system-wide Python packages, avoid pip, use your system package manager, else you will eventually end up with conflicts when something you install requires the library you have pip installed, and your package manager wants to install it. Install virtualenv and virtualenvwrapper with your system package manager! Then use virtualenv for any actual projects you are working on. If your repository version of virtualenv/virtualenvwrapper is outdated, use better repos/PPAs/AUR. Basically, you should never ever find yourself typing sudo pip. If you refuse to use a virtualenv for some reason, use pip --user. The other benefit of this approach is that your system package manager will keep your system packages up to date and the required versions for any software on your system. Honestly, I think the best solution in the long term would be for pip, by default, to install to a user environment (installing in ~/.local using the --user flag) if it is run unprivileged and not in a virtualenv.
- chimeracoder 14y ago
  My workflow (which has never led to conflicts): - Never run pip outside of a virtualenv. I prefer to use virtualenv directly so that I have everything contained in my working directory, but virtualenvwrapper is fine too. - Never install system-wide Python packages directly. Okay, I'm exaggerating, but I don't think I've ever needed a system-wide Python package as anything more than a dependency - and in the rare case when I have, the AUR (in my case) makes it easy to wrap a setup.py file inside a 'system' package. The only problem with this workflow is that I still haven't figured out how to change the IPython module path, so when I run IPython inside a working directory with a virtualenv activated, I access the system packages, not the locally-installed ones. I could pip install IPython, but that'd add a completely unnecessary dependency to every project. Does anybody know an easy way to switch the path for IPython via command line switch, etc.?
  - mvermaat 14y ago
    I have a "pip install ipython" in ~/.virtualenvs/postmkvirtualenv to make that a bit easier. My major problem I have is packages using cython or depending on external C header files in some other way. For example, matplotlib and the IPython qtconsole. For one, I don't even have gcc on servers that I want to deploy to using a virtualenv. but the major pain is finding out what *-dev packages I need to have installed in order to install using pip (if it can be done at all). I don't think I ever had the IPython qtconsole working from a virtualenv without using system site packages.
EnderMB 14y ago
I'm a .NET developer by trade with some very brief experience writing Java applications in Linux. My only real experiences with Linux is from my degree as since then I've been dedicated to .NET. Something I've wanted to do for a very long time is pick up Linux and to be able to use it as well as your typical developer that uses Linux from day-to-day. For this reason, I've decided to pick up Python and use it on my new Ubuntu desktop (dual-boot on top of Windows 7) along with the online version of Learn Python the hard way. So far, it's been a real struggle to get things working the way I'd like. Writing Python on Windows 7 has been a surprisingly painless experience so far, but getting something like Django set up took me hours. Perhaps I just suck with Linux, who knows? Outside of the pain of setting things up things just seem to work well and I'm glad that I decided to take the plunge in Linux over Windows. Python might not ever pay the bills, but I can apply myself in a different way and perhaps make myself employable in the future outside of .NET or Java. I love "The Unix Way" of doing things and hopefully it'll eventually click.
- orangethirty 14y ago
  I went through the same thing. My experience showed that the difficulty rose from the two very different work flows. Windows is mosly a point and click deal. Even the .NET IDE of choice (VS) is less about coding and more about hitting the space bar. I'm not critizing it, because it is very good and helps save time. Though it did make me lazier, which I thought would be impossible. On the other hand, Linux/python/any language really, is a bit more raw. You have to do a lot of things yourself. There is little hand holding (though it has been improved over the last years). It pushed me to really dig into the OS and learn how it works, instead of just sitting there clicking. It has also helped as an engineer, because I know write code that is more modular, instead of platform specific. And by modular I dont mean OOP abstractions, but it the end product being able to be used by different OS versions. I suggest you just jump right into it. Being well versed in Linux doesn't mean you will not hit walls. You will. I guarantee it. It just means you will understand why did you hit the wall and how to jump over it. I suggest you create a VM with Ubuntu running on it and just install stuff without a fear of breaking it. One of the most fun (and frustrating) experiences I had was with learning how to use chmod. I once changed almost every file on the OS to file settings 777 (writeable, readable by anyone). Just keep hacking at it. It has taken me at least 6 years to reach this point.
neovive 14y ago
Great outline. I've been learning Python on and off for the past few months. After getting comfortable with easy_install, pip and virtualenv things improved dramatically. However, I found it very difficult to get a dev environment running for MySQL development. It took quite a bit of Googling to figure out which libraries needed to be installed on the Mac. Pip worked very well for everything else.
- taude 14y ago
  I went thought this pain with Postgresql, trying to get it working on the Mac. I went with the Vagrant/VM route and now run a linux-based dev environment inside of OS X. It also has the benefit of not polluting my host OS. And has prepared me for actual Linux deployment. I can mount the VM web-directory from my host OS so I can continue using some of my favorite tools.
taude 14y ago
I run my Python dev environment on a virtualized ubuntu VM that I control with Vagrant. After spending hours trying to get Homebrew to install Postgresql, someone at a Django user group suggested this methodology. I haven't looked back. It also comes with the added bonus that I can move my virutalized Ubuntu python dev stack around to other machines/platforms, too. And, as a bonus, you eventually are likely going to deploy to Linux anyway,...
BerislavLopac 14y ago
I really don't understand this obsession with git. I've been heavily using both git and mercurial, and git keeps getting in my way no matter how much more I learn about using it. Whenever I have an option I choose mercurial, as it simply makes much more sense, to me at least.

80 points by jeffreyfox 14y ago

A quote from the article: "Install this bad boy with the simple command sudo apt-get install python ..." Two things: 1. Fedora and related distribution users will want to say "yum -y install python" instead. 2. But it's hard to imagine a distribution that doesn't have Python installed by default, because so many Linux system utilities are written in Python. Another quote: "Alternatively, you can just start hacking away and use StackOverflow to fill in any of the gaps in your knowledge." Yes, good suggestion, but there's always the searchable online Python documentation: http://www.python.org/doc/ http://www.python.org/doc/ And if you're offline for any amount of time, the documentation can be downloaded: http://docs.python.org/download.html http://docs.python.org/download.html (2.x) http://docs.python.org/py3k/download.html http://docs.python.org/py3k/download.html (3.x) Python has some amazing libraries -- even symbolic algebra (what Mathematica does): from sympy import * x,a,b,c = var('x a b c') pprint(solve(a * x**2 + b * x + c,x), use_unicode=False) The result: _____________ / _____________\ / 2 | / 2 | -b + \/ -4*a*c + b -\b + \/ -4*a*c + b / [---------------------, -----------------------] 2*a 2*a The Unicode output is, of course, much nicer: http://i.imgur.com/fR7qO.png http://i.imgur.com/fR7qO.png

icebraining 14y ago
You can actually paste the Unicode output here: ⎡ ⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽ ⎛ ⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽⎞⎤ ⎢ ╱ 2 ⎜ ╱ 2 ⎟⎥ ⎢-b + ╲╱ -4⋅a⋅c + b -⎝b + ╲╱ -4⋅a⋅c + b ⎠⎥ ⎢─────────────────────, ───────────────────────⎥ ⎣ 2⋅a 2⋅a ⎦
- TobbenTM 14y ago
  Well... http://i.imgur.com/Rxh63.png http://i.imgur.com/Rxh63.png
  - freehunter 14y ago
    That's interesting, it shows up perfectly for me in the comment (latest Firefox, Ubuntu 12.04).
    - chmike 14y ago
      Not on the iPad :(
  - icebraining 14y ago
    Your browser's monospace font isn't monospace. You should choose a different one.
    - sp332 14y ago
      If the monospace font doesn't support those characters, maybe the browser fell back to a non-monospace font.
      - icebraining 14y ago
        No, if you look at the ASCII version posted above, it's distorted too (the big parenthesis are wrong, for example).
  - lutusp 14y ago
    Yes, I see the problem -- I assumed that other browsers were using a monospace font for the HN monospace-markup sections. This isn't always the case. Even my rendering in Google Chrome on Linux isn't perfect.
- muyuu 14y ago
  You can, but most people will see little boxes all over the place.
  - icebraining 14y ago
    True, but in my opinion they should install fonts with decent unicode support anyway.
    - crisnoble 14y ago
      And how would one go about doing that on an iPhone?
takluyver 14y ago
And Sympy's output in the IPython notebook is even nicer: http://i.imgur.com/ldfLd.png http://i.imgur.com/ldfLd.png To enable that, run: %load_ext sympyprinting
- thronemonkey 14y ago
  holy shit, did not know about this. This was really the one thing from Mathematica that I was still missing in iPython. Thank you!
hntester123 14y ago
Though your comment was not in reply to me, thanks for the above info. I knew about IPython but not about the IPython Notebook or the QtConsole. I just googled for IPython notebook and read some of that info, but can you give an example or two of what that style of working is useful for? Is it good for exploratory stuff?

antihero 14y ago

One thing I'd like to add/contradict. For system-wide Python packages, avoid pip, use your system package manager, else you will eventually end up with conflicts when something you install requires the library you have pip installed, and your package manager wants to install it. Install virtualenv and virtualenvwrapper with your system package manager! Then use virtualenv for any actual projects you are working on. If your repository version of virtualenv/virtualenvwrapper is outdated, use better repos/PPAs/AUR. Basically, you should never ever find yourself typing sudo pip. If you refuse to use a virtualenv for some reason, use pip --user. The other benefit of this approach is that your system package manager will keep your system packages up to date and the required versions for any software on your system. Honestly, I think the best solution in the long term would be for pip, by default, to install to a user environment (installing in ~/.local using the --user flag) if it is run unprivileged and not in a virtualenv.

chimeracoder 14y ago
My workflow (which has never led to conflicts): - Never run pip outside of a virtualenv. I prefer to use virtualenv directly so that I have everything contained in my working directory, but virtualenvwrapper is fine too. - Never install system-wide Python packages directly. Okay, I'm exaggerating, but I don't think I've ever needed a system-wide Python package as anything more than a dependency - and in the rare case when I have, the AUR (in my case) makes it easy to wrap a setup.py file inside a 'system' package. The only problem with this workflow is that I still haven't figured out how to change the IPython module path, so when I run IPython inside a working directory with a virtualenv activated, I access the system packages, not the locally-installed ones. I could pip install IPython, but that'd add a completely unnecessary dependency to every project. Does anybody know an easy way to switch the path for IPython via command line switch, etc.?
- mvermaat 14y ago
  I have a "pip install ipython" in ~/.virtualenvs/postmkvirtualenv to make that a bit easier. My major problem I have is packages using cython or depending on external C header files in some other way. For example, matplotlib and the IPython qtconsole. For one, I don't even have gcc on servers that I want to deploy to using a virtualenv. but the major pain is finding out what *-dev packages I need to have installed in order to install using pip (if it can be done at all). I don't think I ever had the IPython qtconsole working from a virtualenv without using system site packages.

EnderMB 14y ago

I'm a .NET developer by trade with some very brief experience writing Java applications in Linux. My only real experiences with Linux is from my degree as since then I've been dedicated to .NET. Something I've wanted to do for a very long time is pick up Linux and to be able to use it as well as your typical developer that uses Linux from day-to-day. For this reason, I've decided to pick up Python and use it on my new Ubuntu desktop (dual-boot on top of Windows 7) along with the online version of Learn Python the hard way. So far, it's been a real struggle to get things working the way I'd like. Writing Python on Windows 7 has been a surprisingly painless experience so far, but getting something like Django set up took me hours. Perhaps I just suck with Linux, who knows? Outside of the pain of setting things up things just seem to work well and I'm glad that I decided to take the plunge in Linux over Windows. Python might not ever pay the bills, but I can apply myself in a different way and perhaps make myself employable in the future outside of .NET or Java. I love "The Unix Way" of doing things and hopefully it'll eventually click.

orangethirty 14y ago
I went through the same thing. My experience showed that the difficulty rose from the two very different work flows. Windows is mosly a point and click deal. Even the .NET IDE of choice (VS) is less about coding and more about hitting the space bar. I'm not critizing it, because it is very good and helps save time. Though it did make me lazier, which I thought would be impossible. On the other hand, Linux/python/any language really, is a bit more raw. You have to do a lot of things yourself. There is little hand holding (though it has been improved over the last years). It pushed me to really dig into the OS and learn how it works, instead of just sitting there clicking. It has also helped as an engineer, because I know write code that is more modular, instead of platform specific. And by modular I dont mean OOP abstractions, but it the end product being able to be used by different OS versions. I suggest you just jump right into it. Being well versed in Linux doesn't mean you will not hit walls. You will. I guarantee it. It just means you will understand why did you hit the wall and how to jump over it. I suggest you create a VM with Ubuntu running on it and just install stuff without a fear of breaking it. One of the most fun (and frustrating) experiences I had was with learning how to use chmod. I once changed almost every file on the OS to file settings 777 (writeable, readable by anyone). Just keep hacking at it. It has taken me at least 6 years to reach this point.

neovive 14y ago

Great outline. I've been learning Python on and off for the past few months. After getting comfortable with easy_install, pip and virtualenv things improved dramatically. However, I found it very difficult to get a dev environment running for MySQL development. It took quite a bit of Googling to figure out which libraries needed to be installed on the Mac. Pip worked very well for everything else.

taude 14y ago
I went thought this pain with Postgresql, trying to get it working on the Mac. I went with the Vagrant/VM route and now run a linux-based dev environment inside of OS X. It also has the benefit of not polluting my host OS. And has prepared me for actual Linux deployment. I can mount the VM web-directory from my host OS so I can continue using some of my favorite tools.

taude 14y ago

I run my Python dev environment on a virtualized ubuntu VM that I control with Vagrant. After spending hours trying to get Homebrew to install Postgresql, someone at a Django user group suggested this methodology. I haven't looked back. It also comes with the added bonus that I can move my virutalized Ubuntu python dev stack around to other machines/platforms, too. And, as a bonus, you eventually are likely going to deploy to Linux anyway,...

BerislavLopac 14y ago

I really don't understand this obsession with git. I've been heavily using both git and mercurial, and git keeps getting in my way no matter how much more I learn about using it. Whenever I have an option I choose mercurial, as it simply makes much more sense, to me at least.