Confusion regarding installation. about lightning HOT 6 CLOSED

Hi!

1. What is the difference ?

Pip installs the project directly in your Python distribution. The second makes a local copy and installs it to your Python distribution.

1. I plan to fork this repo and contribute to it, in that case, should I install from source ?

Yes. It's better to edit the local copy than the files in your Python distribution.

1. How do I view the effects of the changes I make to my local code clone ?

One solution is to run sudo python setup.py install every time but this is not very convenient.

Personally, I have added lightning to the PYTHONPATH environment variable in my .bashrc file:

export PYTHONPATH=/path/to/lightning:$PYTHONPATH

where /path/to/lightning is the project root folder (the one containing the README.rst file). This way, Python will look in this folder when doing import lightning.

lightning contains a few C files that must be compiled directly in the project. This can be done with

make inplace

at the project root. Let me know if something was unclear.

from lightning.

Neat!

I was also wondering about virtual envs (Anaconda). Can they be used ?

Also, if instead of changing my PYTHONPATH environment variable, if I cd into the root folder before importing lightning, won't it have the same effect ?

from lightning.

I was also wondering about virtual envs (Anaconda). Can they be used ?

Not sure what you mean.

Also, if instead of changing my PYTHONPATH environment variable, if I cd into the root folder before importing lightning, won't it have the same effect ?

This will only work if you put your .py files at the project root, which I don't recommend.

from lightning.

So, basically I should install via source, point my PYTHONPATH to the project dir and compile each time I make a change.

from lightning.

Exactly.

from lightning.

Thank you, I am sorted.

from lightning.