Installation of PyImfit

Note that since PyImfit is only meant to work with Python 3 (specifically, version 3.5 or later on Linux and version 3.6 or later on macOS), I reference pip3 instead of just pip in the example installation commands below. If your version of pip automatically installs into Python 3, then you don’t need to explicitly specify pip3.

Standard Installation: macOS

A precompiled binary version (“wheel”) of PyImfit for macOS can be installed from PyPI via pip:

$ pip3 install pyimfit

PyImfit requires the following Python libraries/packages (which will automatically be installed by pip if they are not already present):

• Numpy
• Scipy

Astropy is also useful for reading in FITS files as numpy arrays (and is required by the unit tests).

Standard Installation: Linux

PyImfit can also be installed on Linux using pip. Since this involves building from source, you will need to have a working C++-11-compatible compiler (e.g., GCC version 4.8.1 or later); this is probably true for any reasonably modern Linux installation. (Note: a 64-bit Linux system is required.)

$ pip3 install pyimfit   [or "pip3 install --user pyimfit", if installing for your own use]

If the installation fails with a message containing something like “fatal error: Python.h: No such file or directory”, then you may be missing headers files and static libraries for Python development; see this Stackexchange question for guidance on how to do that.