Install Numpy on Mac OS X Lion 10.7

Question

I need to install Numpy on my Mac OS X Lion 10.7. I googled a little bit, it seems like there are a lot of stuff needs to be installed. And some says I need install Xcode before I install Numpy. But the official website of Numpy doesn't give much information about installing Numpy on Mac. I really don't want to install Xcode as it would cost a lot space.

So anyone knows how to install Numpy? What's the prerequisites?

Thanks,

• Foo Bah: is the numpy that comes with osx not sufficient?
• El Developer: Sometimes it is not, for some software packages.

Answer 1

Lion comes with numpy installed. It should already be there:

$ python -c 'import numpy, numpy.version; print numpy, numpy.version.version'
<module 'numpy' from '/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/Extras/lib/python/numpy/__init__.py'> 1.5.1

Answer 2

For anyone that hits this from google, here is where I figured out how to build numpy on Mac OS.

http://www.scipy.org/Installing_SciPy/Mac_OS_X

On lion, it amounts to setting some environment variables (after Xcode is installed):

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

Then pip install numpy works just fine.

Answer 3

I have used a few software packages that require a fresh install of NumPy, that won't work with the built in NumPy or even with the built-in Python. The easiest way to install NumPy on the mac is to download any of these packages. This will work for most OS versions.

• Python 2.7
• Python 2.6
• Python 2.5

Still the other answers are valid, though this is a more general answer.

This is the SourceForge page of the project.

Answer 4

If you do install Xcode you can get the latest and greatest open source libraries and packages. Consider using the excellent Mac Ports (http://www.macports.org) project. It is a package manager that will download source packages and their dependencies and build all the libraries and tools for you.

Installing Numpy becomes a one line command once Xcode and mac ports is installed:

sudo port install py27-numpy

Answer 5

The easiest way that I found was to visit http://sourceforge.net/projects/numpy/files/NumPy/, pick the folder of the latest version, and then download the .dmg file that matched my installed version of Python.

• RnD: somehow this was the best option. Awesome!
• Bjørn Kjos-Hanssen: this works, but notice you want a .dmg file like in El Developer's answer, but you want the OS 10.6 version not the OS 10.3 version that El Developer linked to.

Answer 6

Based on this post, I found that Chris Fonnesbeck keeps a highly functional installer script for OSX 10.7 at the OSX SuperPack Github site.

Because I hapened to have all the dependencies (such as gfortran) already, I did not use his full shell script. Rather I just did

git clone --depth=1 git://github.com/fonnesbeck/ScipySuperpack.git 
python -m easy_install -N -Z ScipySuperpack/*.egg 

And it worked beautifully. In particular, it worked better than the .dmg files from the official numpy and scipy distributions, and better than pip install.

Answer 7

You can install numpy/scipy using pip, If pip is not installed on your machine, you can install it with easy_install:

sudo easy_install pip

Then install numpy:

sudo pip install numpy

Answer 8

A very easy route is to install Anaconda from Continuum, or Enthought's Canopy. These are python distributions that include numpy, as well as other useful scientific computing libraries

Answer 9

Generally, unless you have a good reason you might want to avoid trying to have to build numpy/scipy et al. yourself.

For Mac's there are two nice everything-included packages for numerical python. Enthough distribution (paid, http://www.enthought.com/) and Sagemath (free, http://www.sagemath.org/). I'm happily using Sagemath on 10.7 - it has numpy, scipy etc.