Installation

The PyLops project stives to create a library that is easy to install in any environment and has a very limited number of dependencies. However, since Python2 will retire soon, we have decided to only focus on a Python3 implementation. If you are still using Python2, hurry up!

For this reason you will need Python 3.5 or greater to get started.

Dependencies

Our mandatory dependencies are limited to:

We advise using the Anaconda Python distribution to ensure that these dependencies are installed via the Conda package manager. This is not just a pure stylistic choice but comes with some hidden advantages, such as the linking to Intel MKL library (i.e., a highly optimized BLAS library created by Intel).

If you simply want to use PyLops for teaching purposes or for small-scale examples, this should not really affect you. However, if you are interested in getting better code performance, read carefully the Advanced installation page.

Optional dependencies

PyLops’s optional dependencies refer to those dependencies that we do not include in our requirements.txt and environment.yml files and thus are not strictly needed nor installed directly as part of a standar installation (see below for details)

However, we sometimes implement additional back-ends (referred to as engine in the code) for some of our operators in order to improve their performance. To do so, we rely on third-party libraries. Those libraries are generally added to the list of our optional dependencies. If you are not after code performance, you may simply stick to the mandatory dependencies and pylops will ensure to always fallback to one of those for any linear operator.

If you are instead after code performance, take a look at the Optional dependencies section in the Advanced installation page.

Step-by-step installation for users

Python environment

Activate your Python environment, and simply type the following command in your terminal to install the PyPi distribution:

>> pip install pylops

If using Conda, you can also install our conda-forge distribution via:

>> conda install -c conda-forge pylops

Note that using the conda-forge distribution is reccomended as all the dependencies (both mandatory and optional) will be correctly installed for you, while only mandatory dependencies are installed using the pip distribution.

Alternatively, to access the latest source from github:

>> pip install https://github.com/equinor/pylops/archive/master.zip

or just clone the repository

>> git clone https://github.com/equinor/pylops.git

or download the zip file from the repository (green button in the top right corner of the main github repo page) and install PyLops from terminal using the command:

>> make install

Docker

If you want to try PyLops but do not have Python in your local machine, you can use our Docker image instead.

After installing Docker in your computer, type the following command in your terminal (note that this will take some time the first time you type it as you will download and install the docker image):

>> docker run -it -v /path/to/local/folder:/home/jupyter/notebook -p 8888:8888 mrava87/pylops:notebook

This will give you an address that you can put in your browser and will open a jupyter-notebook enviroment with PyLops and other basic Python libraries installed. Here /path/to/local/folder is the absolute path of a local folder on your computer where you will create a notebook (or containing notebooks that you want to continue working on). Note that anything you do to the notebook(s) will be saved in your local folder.

A larger image with Conda distribution is also available. Simply use conda_notebook instead of notebook in the previous command.

Step-by-step installation for developers

Fork and clone the repository by executing the following in your terminal:

>> git clone https://github.com/your_name_here/pylops.git

The first time you clone the repository run the following command:

>> make dev-install

If you prefer to build a new Conda enviroment just for PyLops, run the following command:

>> make dev-install_conda

To ensure that everything has been setup correctly, run tests:

>> make tests

Make sure no tests fail, this guarantees that the installation has been successfull.

If using Conda environment, always remember to activate the conda environment every time you open a new bash shell by typing:

>> source activate pylops