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zanoni-mbdyn / blendyn

MBDyn (https://www.mbdyn.org/) graphical post-processor for blender (https://www.blender.org/)
GNU General Public License v2.0
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Blendyn with Blender's own Python and the required packages #8

Closed louisgag closed 7 years ago

louisgag commented 7 years ago

This issue can count towards the entry exam for the Blendyn related projects for MBDyn-GSoC2017 This issue may be quite challenging and not much support can be given by the mentors

In its current form, the Blendyn plugin needs a series of Python packages such as numpy, netCDF4, pygal, cairosvg, tinycss, lxml, cssselect, etc. to run with full potential. These packages are not part of the official Blender binaries that are released on the official Blender website. Furthermore, the pip interface required to install Python packages is not available in the Python that comes with precompiled versions of Blender.

This means that only the system's installed Blender, which uses the system's installed Python, which in turn has the pip package manager can be used adequately with Blendyn.

A solution would be useful for all those who want to use the latest Blender version with Blendyn.

As stated above, it may be a challenging and long task as we have already attempted solutions such as installing precompiled Blenders from different sources, compiling Blender, using the system's Python with a precompiled Blender, copying/linking the interested packages from the system's Python into Blender's Python and none of those solutions worked properly. Good luck.

zanoni-mbdyn commented 7 years ago

I've just tried the procedure on OsX, and I got stuck because Pygal is not available through conda for this platform. I'm getting less and less convinced about the whole process.

In OsX, as reported in the wiki here I've managed to get all to work with MacPorts and pip. It is a solution that works and has the same amount of complexity as the one that we are banging our heads upon here.

I wonder if we're not better off, at least in linux, to advice the user to just install the package relative to the distribution of Python used in Blender and the corresponding pip package, install the required python packages through pip and then make the simlink of the correct site-packages folder. Then again, I REALLY struggle to see why anyone would NOT want to install Blender from the official repos of the distro, but that's just me...

For Windows, we could suggest the procedure of the last post.

louisgag commented 7 years ago

I replied by email but it seems to not have registered it.. Here it is:

On 17-May-2017 12:19 PM, Andrea Zanoni wrote:

I've just tried the procedure on OsX, and I got stuck because Pygal is not available through conda for this platform. I'm getting less and less convinced about the whole process.

Have you tried to install from the "other" repositories? From inside the vistual env: anaconda search -t conda packageName then conda install -c SourceName packageName

In OsX, as reported in the wiki here I've managed to get all to work with MacPorts and pip. It is a solution that works and has the same amount of complexity as the one that we are banging our heads upon here.

I wonder if we're not better off, at least in linux, to advice the user to just install the package relative to the distribution of Python used in Blender and the corresponding pip package, install the required python packages through pip and then make the simlink of the correct site-packages folder.

that does not work neither for me

Then again, I REALLY struggle to see why anyone would NOT want to install Blender from the official repos of the distro, but that's just me...

Yes, at first I wanted to use the latest Blender, but it's just too much hassle to get the Python packages working

janga1997 commented 7 years ago

Does it happen that the system Python of a user may be 2. , and Blender installed from official repos may have Python of 3. ? I think it does, I am not sure.

zanoni-mbdyn commented 7 years ago

Have you tried to install from the "other" repositories? From inside the vistual env: anaconda search -t conda packageName then conda install -c SourceName packageName

@louisgag Yes, I tried that, but no anaconda package is providing Pygal for OsX.

that does not work neither for me

Where do you get stuck?

Yes, at first I wanted to use the latest Blender, but it's just too much hassle to get the Python packages working

Just switch to Fedora... :P

zanoni-mbdyn commented 7 years ago

Does it happen that the system Python of a user may be 2. , and Blender installed from official repos may have Python of 3. ? I think it does, I am not sure.

@janga1997 I really don't know... Not on the distros I've used or the ones that I'm aware of, anyway. In my experience, it has happened only in OsX.

janga1997 commented 7 years ago

Well then, this method is quite unnecessary for most people. Should we just let the wiki be as it is right now, and I will maybe write a blog post on this. There are Stackoverflow pages on this though, only they skip the steps.

zanoni-mbdyn commented 7 years ago

I think that we could write in the wiki the Windows part (I just have to find the time to test it, before) and maybe we could add just a comment with a link to this discussion, for the brave that really want to try.

zanoni-mbdyn commented 7 years ago

And with this, I'm closing this issue.