1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
|
.. _virtualenv-faq:
***********************************************
Working with Matplotlib in Virtual environments
***********************************************
While Matplotlib itself runs fine in a `virtual environment
<https://docs.python.org/3/library/venv.html>`_ (venv), some of the GUI
frameworks that Matplotlib uses for interactive figures are tricky to install
in a venv. Everything below assumes some familiarity with the Matplotlib
backends as found in :ref:`What is a backend? <what-is-a-backend>`.
If you only use the IPython and Jupyter Notebook's ``inline`` and ``notebook``
backends, or non-interactive backends, you should not have any issues and can
ignore everything below.
Likewise, the ``Tk`` framework (``TkAgg`` backend) does not require any
external dependencies and is normally always available. On certain Linux
distributions, a package named ``python-tk`` (or similar) needs to be
installed.
Otherwise, the situation (at the time of writing) is as follows:
========= ========= ================ =================================
framework bindings pip-installable? conda or conda-forge-installable?
========= ========= ================ =================================
Qt5 PyQt5 yes yes
Qt5 PySide2 yes yes
Qt4 PyQt4 no yes
Qt4 PySide OSX and Windows yes
GTK3 PyGObject yes [#]_ Linux and OSX
wxWidgets wxPython yes [#]_ yes
========= ========= ================ =================================
.. [#] No wheels available, see
https://pygobject.readthedocs.io/en/latest/devguide/dev_environ.html
for build instructions.
.. [#] OSX and Windows wheels available on PyPI. Linux wheels available but
not on PyPI, see https://wxpython.org/pages/downloads/.
For cases where the framework is not installable in a venv, it needs to be
installed in the global (system) site-packages, and then made available from
within the venv. This can be achieved by either of the following methods (in
all cases, the system-wide Python and the venv Python must be of the same
version):
- `vext <https://pypi.python.org/pypi/vext>`_ allows controlled access
from within the venv to specific system-wide packages. A specific
package needs to be installed for each framework, e.g. `vext.pyqt5
<https://pypi.python.org/pypi/vext.pyqt5>`_, etc. It is recommended to use
``vext>=0.7.0`` as earlier versions misconfigure the logging system.
- Using the ``--system-site-packages`` option when creating an environment
adds all system-wide packages to the virtual environment. However, this
breaks the isolation between the virtual environment and the system
install. Among other issues it results in hard to debug problems with
system packages shadowing the environment packages. If you use `virtualenv
<https://virtualenv.pypa.io/>` (rather than the stdlib's ``venv``) together
with `virtualenvwrapper <https://virtualenvwrapper.readthedocs.io/>`_, this
can be toggled with the ``toggleglobalsitepackages`` command.
If you are using Matplotlib on OSX, you may also want to consider the
:ref:`OSX framework FAQ <osxframework-faq>`.
|
