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# Installation

Section summary

This section detais the various ways of installing and compiling Mayavi.

If you already have Mayavi up and running, you can skip this section.

Up-to-date install instructions for the latest version of mayavi are always available from links at the Mayavi2 wiki page. The following will give you a good idea of the general installation procedure and a start on where to look for more information.

## Installing ready-made distributions

Windows: | Under Window the best way to install Mayavi is to install a full Python distribution, such as EPD or Pythonxy. Note that Pythonxy has a special download which provides a complete installer for Mayavi and all its dependencies and is a much smaller download than EPD or the full Pythonxy install.
MacOSX: | The full Python distribution EPD (that includes Mayavi) is also available for MacOSX. Unless you really enjoy the intricacies of compilation, this is the best solution to install Mayavi.
Ubuntu or Debian:
| Mayavi is packaged in Debian and Ubuntu. In addition, packages of the latest Mayavi release for the stable version of Ubuntu are available at https://launchpad.net/~gael-varoquaux/+archive . Experimental Debian packages are also available at http://people.debian.org/~varun/ .
RedHat EL3 and EL4:
| The full Python distribution EPD (that includes Mayavi) is also available for RHEL3 and 4.

## Requirements for manual installs

If you are not using full, ready-made, scientific Python distribution, you need to satistify Mayavi’s requirements (for a step-by-step guide on installing all these under windows, see below.

Mayavi requires at the very minimum the following packages:

> - VTK >= 4.4 (5.x is ideal)
> - numpy >= 1.0.1
> - setuptools (for installation and egg builds)
> - Traits >= 3.0 (Traits, TraitsGUI and TraitsBackendWX or TraitsBackendQt, EnthoughtBase, AppTools) Note Depending on your installation procedure, you might not need to instal manually these requirements.

The following requirements are really optional but strongly recommended, especially if you are new to mayavi:

> - wxPython 2.8.x
> - configobj
> - Envisage == 3.x (EnvisageCore and EnvisagePlugins) Note These last requirements can be automatically installed, see below.

One can install the requirements in several ways.

> - Windows and MacOSX: even if you want to build from source, a good way to install the requirements is to install one of the distributions indicated above. Note that under Windows, EPD comes with a compiler (mingw) and facilitates building Mayavi.

> - Linux: Most Linux distributions will have installable binaries available for the some of the above. For example, under Debian or Ubuntu you would need `python-vtk`, `python-wxgtk2.6`, `python-setuptools`, `python-numpy`, `python-configobj`. More information on specific distributions and how you can get the requirements for each of these should be available from the list of distributions here:

>   > https://svn.enthought.com/enthought/wiki/Install

> - Mac OS X: The best available instructions for this platform are available on the IntelMacPython25 page.

There are several ways to install TVTK, Traits and Mayavi. These are described in the following.

## Doing it yourself: Python packages: Eggs

### Installing with easy_install

First make sure you have the prerequisites for Mayavi installed, as indicated in the previous section, i.e. the following packages:

> - VTK >= 4.4 (5.x is ideal)
> - numpy >= 1.0.1
> - wxPython >= 2.8.0
> - configobj
> - setuptools (for installation and egg builds; later the better)

Mayavi_ is part of the Enthought Tool Suite (ETS). As such, it is distributed as part of ETS and therefore binary packages and source packages of ETS will contain Mayavi. Mayavi releases are almost always made along with an ETS release. You may choose to install all of ETS or just Mayavi alone from a release.

ETS has been organized into several different Python packages. These packages are distributed as Python Eggs. Python eggs are fairly sophisticated and carry information on dependencies with other eggs. As such they are rapidly becoming the standard for distributing Python packages.

The easiest way to install Mayavi with eggs is to use pre-built eggs built for your particular platform and downloaded by easy_install. Alternatively easy_install can build the eggs from the source tarballs. This is also fairly easy to do if you have a proper build environment.

To install eggs, first make sure the essential requirements are installed, and then build and install the eggs like so:

    $ easy_install "Mayavi[app]"

This one command will download, build and install all the required ETS related modules that Mayavi needs for the latest ETS release, this means that the Traits dependencies and the Envisage dependencies will be installed automatically. If you run into trouble please check the Enthought Install pages.

One common sources of problems during an install, is the presence of older versions of packages such as traits, mayavi, envisage or tvtk. Make sure that you clean you `site-packages` before installing a new version of Mayavi. Another problem often encountered is running into what is probably a bug of the build system that appears as a “sandbox violation”. In this case, it can be useful to try the download and install command a few times.

If you still have problems, given this background, please see the following Enthought Install describes how ETS can be installed with eggs. Check this page first. It contains information on how to install the prebuilt binary eggs for various platforms along with any dependencies.

Note

Automatic downloading of required eggs

If you whish to download all the eggs fetched by easy_install, for instance to propagate to an offline PC, you can use virtualenv to create an empty site-packages, and install to it:

    virtualenv --no-site-packages temp
    cd temp
    source bin/activate
    mkdir temp_subdir
    easy_install -zmaxd temp_subdir "Mayavi[app,nonets]"

### Step-by-step instructions to install with eggs under Windows

If you do not whish to install a ready-made distribution under Windows, these instructions (provided by Guillaume Duclaux) will guide you through the necessary steps to configure a Windows environment in which Mayavi will run.

1. Install Python 2.5. Add ‘C:Python25;` to the PATH environment variables.

2. Install Mingw32, from the Download section of http://www.mingw.org/ , use the MinGW5.1.4 installer. Add ‘C:MinGWbin;’ to the PATH environment variables.

3. Create a ‘c:documents and settingsUSERNAMEpydistutils.cfg’ file(where USERNAME is the login) with the following contents:

       [build]
       compiler=mingw32

4. Create the new environment variable HOME and set it to the value: ‘c:docume~1USERNAME;’ (where USERNAME is the login name)

5. Install Setuptools (0.6c9 binary) from its webpage, and ‘C:Python25Scripts;’ to the PATH environment variables

6. Install VTK 5.2 (using Dr Charl P. Botha Windows binary http://cpbotha.net/2008/09/23/python-25-enabled-vtk-52-windows-binaries/ )

   > - Unzip the folder content in ‘C:\Program Files\VTK5.2_cpbotha’
   > - add ‘C:\Program Files\VTK5.2_cpbotha\bin;’ to the PATH environment variables
   > - create a new environment variable PYTHONPATH and set it to the value ‘C:\Program Files\VTK5.2_cpbotha\lib\site-packages;’
   > - If you are running an old version of windows (older than XP) download msvcr80.dll and msvcp80.dll from the www.dll-files.com website and copy them into C:\winnt\system32.

7. Install Numpy (1.2.1 binary from http://numpy.scipy.org/ )

8. Installing wxPython (2.8 binary from http://www.wxpython.org/ )

9. Run in cmd.exe:

       easy_install Sphinx EnvisageCore EnvisagePlugins configobj

10. Finally, run in cmd.exe:

        easy_install Mayavi[app]

## The bleeding edge: SVN

If you want to get the latest development version of Mayavi, we recommend that you check it out from SVN. Mayavi depends on several packages that are part of ETS. It is highly likely that the in-development mayavi version may depend on some feature of an as yet unreleased component. Therefore, it is very convenient to get all the relevant ETS projects that mayavi recursively depends on in one single checkout. In order to do this easily, Dave Peterson has created a package called ETSProjectTools. This must first be installed and then any of ETS related repositories may be checked out. Here is how you can get the latest development sources.

> 1. Install ETSProjectTools like so:

>        $ svn co https://svn.enthought.com/svn/enthought/ETSProjectTools/trunk \
>               ETSProjectTools
>        $ cd ETSProjectTools
>        $ python setup.py install

>    This will give you the useful scripts `ets`. For more details on the tool and various options check the ETSProjectTools wiki page.

> 2. To get just the sources for mayavi and all its dependencies do this:

>        $ ets co "Mayavi[app]"

>    This will look at the latest available mayavi, parse its ETS dependencies and check out the relevant sources. If you want a particular mayavi release you may do:

>        $ ets co "Mayavi[app]==3.0.1"

>    If you’d like to get the sources for an entire ETS release do this for example:

>        $ ets co "ets==3.0.2"

>    This will checkout all the relevant sources from SVN. Be patient, this will take a while. More options for the `ets` tool are available in the ETSProjectTools page.

> 3. Once the sources are checked out you may either do an:

>        $ ets develop

>    This will install all the checked out sources via a `setup.py develop` applied to each package.

> 4. Alternatively, you may want to build binary eggs, of the sources. The `ets bdist` command can be used to build eggs like so (here we assume that `ets co` checked out the sources into `ets-3.0.3`):

>        $ cd ets-3.0.3
>        $ ets bdist

>    This will build all the eggs and put them inside a `dist` subdirectory. Run `ets bdist -h` for more bdist related options. The mayavi development egg and its dependencies may be installed via:

>        $ easy_install -f dist "Mayavi[app]"

>    Alternatively, if you’d like just `Mayavi` installed via `setup.py develop` with the rest as binary eggs you may do:

>        $ cd Mayavi_x.y.z
>        $ python setup.py develop -f ../dist

>    This will pull in any dependencies from the built eggs.

You should now have the latest version of Mayavi installed and usable.

## Testing your installation

The easiest way to test if your installation is OK is to run the mayavi2 application like so:

    mayavi2

To get more help on the command try this:

    mayavi2 -h

`mayavi2` is the mayavi application. On some platforms like win32 you will need to double click on the `mayavi2.exe` program found in your `Python2X\Scripts` folder. Make sure this directory is in your path.

Note

Mayavi can be used in a variety of other ways but the `mayavi2` application is the easiest to start with.

If you have the source tarball of mayavi or have checked out the sources from the SVN repository, you can run the examples in `enthought.mayavi*/examples`. There are plenty of example scripts illustrating various features. Tests are available in the `enthought.mayavi*/tests` sub-directory.

## Troubleshooting

If you are having trouble with the installation you may want to check the Getting help page for more details on how you can search for information or email the mailing list.

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