Installation

This section describes how to install Python datatable on various systems.

Prerequisites

Python 3.5 or newer is a prerequisite. You can check your python version via

$ python --version

If you don’t have Python 3.5 or later, you may want to download and install the newest version of Python, and then create and activate a virtual environment for that Python. For example:

$ virtualenv --python=python3.6 ~/py36
$ source ~/py36/bin/activate

Install on Mac OS X and Linux

Run the following command to install datatable on Mac OS X and Linux:

$ pip install datatable

Install on Windows

Currently datatable does not work on Windows. There is an open issue #1114 to add support for Windows platforms, and there is a certain amount of progress in that direction; however, there are still some unresolved problems.

Build from Source

In order to install the latest development version of datatable directly from GitHub, run the following command:

$ pip install git+https://github.com/h2oai/datatable

Since datatable is written mostly in C++, you will need to have a C++ compiler on your computer. We recommend either Clang 4+, or gcc 5+, however in theory any compiler that supports C++11 should work.

It is also possible to build datatable with gcc 4.8, which has only partial support of C++11 features. In this case, datatable’s functionality will be limited, and any function using regular expressions will not be supported.

Build modified datatable

If you want to tweak certain features of datatable, or even add your own functionality, you are welcome to do so.

  1. First, clone datatable repository from GitHub:
$ git clone https://github.com/h2oai/datatable
  1. Make datatable:
$ make test_install
$ make
  1. Additional commands you may find occasionally interesting:
# Build a debug version of datatable (for example suitable for ``gdb`` debugging)
$ make debug

# Generate code coverage report
$ make coverage

# Build a debug version of datatable using an auto-generated makefile.
# This does not work on all systems, but when it does it will work
# much faster than standard "make debug".
$ make fast

Troubleshooting

  • If you get the error ImportError: This package should not be accessible on Python 3, then you may have a PYTHONPATH environment variable that causes conflicts. See this SO question for details.

  • If you see an error 'Python.h' file not found, then it means you have an incomplete version of Python installed. This is known to sometimes happen on Ubuntu systems. The solution is to run apt-get install python-dev or apt-get install python3.6-dev.

  • On OS X, if you are getting an error fatal error: 'sys/mman.h' file not found, this can be fixed by installing the Xcode Command Line Tools:

    $ xcode-select --install