PyVISA

Fri Apr 1 14:05:55 EDT 2011

Manatee <markrrivet at aol.com> wrote:
>I have unpacked the PyVISA files into the Python/lib/site-packages dir
>and from the IDLE GUI I get and error
>>import visa
>>Traceback (most recent call last):
> File "<pyshell#25>", line 1, in <module>
> import visa
>ImportError: No module named visa
>>>>There must be more to just putting the files in the correct directory.

Yes, there is more:
- DON'T unpack the files into any site-packages folder. If you already
 have done it, remove them.
- Unpack the PyVISA archive to any other folder.
- On the command line, change into the PyVISA folder. There you should
 find - among others - the two files setup.py and setup.cfg (at least
 if you use PyVISA-1.3.tar.gz).
- Now, it depends on what variant of python you use and want to install
 PyVISA for and on the configuration of your PYTHONPATH rsp. sys.path
 and the folders they point to.
 You can simply try: 'sudo python ./setup install'
 If you are lucky, that's it. If not, you have to decide, where the
 installation script has to put the files to. For example, for my
 python 2.6, I chose
 '/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/'. In this path,
 there is a folder 'lib/site-packages', which is pointed to by
 sys.path, and where .pth files are evaluated.
- Edit the file setup.cfg. Near the end, in section '[install]', you will
 find the line 'prefix=/usr'. Replace the '/usr' by your chosen path.
- Save the file and retry the install (see above).
Best regards,
 Günther