I have re-written the installation procedure to be more robust, so that PyMinuit will be installed correctly on the first try for a wider variety of computers. This page may look daunting, but when you get into it, you'll see that the instructions are all step-by-step. By walking through the process in a pedestrian manner, rather than balling it up in an automated script, you would be better able to diagnose problem if something goes wrong or have more information when requesting help.

The installation has been tested on Windows and Ubuntu Linux. If you have any other Linux distribution, any other variant of Unix, or even a Mac, try the "Linux instructions" and let me know if it works!

1. Download

Download both of the following:

• Minuit-1_7_9.tar.gz
• pyminuit-1.1.0.tgz or pyminuit-1.1.0.zip

and unpack (unarchive) them in a convenient directory. Your browser might do this step automatically.

You should now have two new directories, Minuit-1_7_9 and pyminuit. Minuit is the actual minimization package (in C++) and PyMinuit is the Python interface. Both will need to be compiled.

Extra downloads needed for Windows

Windows doesn't come with a compiler by default, but there's a compatible compiler available called MinGW. Download and install both of the following:

• MinGW a minimal set of Gnu tools, including the Gnu compiler
• MSYS you only need to download "msysCORE-1.0.11-20071204.tar.bz2"

Next, add the location of your new MSYS/bin directory to your Windows Path variable:

1. Right click on My computer
2. choose Properties, Advanced, Environment Variables.
3. In the lower list choose to edit the variable named Path and add the location to your MSYS\bin.

(Naturally, you'll also need to have Python for Windows installed.)

2. Installing on Windows

Now that you have a compiler and installation directories for Minuit-1_7_9 and pyminuit, let's install them one at a time.

Open a command prompt and change directories to your Minuit-1_7_9 directory. Doing so could look like this:

C:\>cd Minuit-1_7_9
C:\Minuit-1_7_9>

Now compile Minuit.

C:\Minuit-1_7_9>sh configure
C:\Minuit-1_7_9>make
C:\Minuit-1_7_9>make install

where each command will generate a lot of output and take a few minutes. Hopefully, they will not end with an error message (something like "Exit 1" at the end).

Switch to your pyminuit directory and run its installation script with these options:

C:\Minuit-1_7_9>cd ..\pyminuit
C:\pyminuit>python setup.py install build -c mingw32 --with-minuit=/location/of/Minuit-1_7_9

2. Installing on Linux/Unix/Mac

Change directories to your new Minuit-1_7_9 directory and build that first. (Your prompt might look different.)

% cd Minuit-1_7_9
% ./configure
% make
% sudo make install    # or su root, then make install

The configure and make commands should produce a lot of output, hopefully not ending with an error message (something with "Exit 1" at the end). If only the make install command fails (possibly because you don't have root access on your computer to install it in the standard location), you can still use PyMinuit, you just need to tell your computer where the Minuit libraries are.

Now switch to your pyminuit directory and run its installation script, telling setup.py where to find the Minuit-1_7_9 directory you downloaded:

% cd ../pyminuit
% python setup.py install --with-minuit=/location/of/Minuit-1_7_9

If you don't have root access, you can install in your home directory (or other directory of your choice) with the --home=/your/home argument.

% python setup.py install --home=~ --with-minuit=/location/of/Minuit-1_7_9

Setting up environment variables

To use PyMinuit, your computer needs to know where the Minuit libraries are and where the PyMinuit package is. If you have root (superuser) access and have installed everything in the standard locations, you can skip this last step.

Otherwise, set your LD_LIBRARY_PATH and PYTHONPATH environment variables like the following. (The values you set below to will depend on where you compiled Minuit-1_7_9 and where you installed PyMinuit. Edit them accordingly!)

% # if you're an sh/bash/zsh user
% export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/location/of/Minuit-1_7_9/src/.libs:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
% export PYTHONPATH=/your/home/lib/python:$PYTHONPATH

% # if you're a csh/tcsh user
% setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH /location/of/Minuit-1_7_9/src/.libs:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
% setenv PYTHONPATH /your/home/lib/python:$PYTHONPATH

(The command echo $SHELL will tell you the name of your shell, and therefore which syntax to use.)

Pointing to your software installation with environment variables is not ideal because the modification will disappear if you ever close your terminal. To make this change permanent, put the above lines in your login script (which might be named .login, .cshrc, .bashrc, .profile...). You can test their values by

% echo $LD_LIBRARY_PATH
% echo $PYTHONPATH

to make sure they're still set up properly in a new terminal.

3. Try it out!

This should install PyMinuit such that you can now "import minuit" from a new Python prompt.

C:\pyminuit>cd \
C:\>python
Python 2.4.3 (#2, Oct  6 2006, 07:52:30) 
[GCC 4.0.3 (Windows)] on windows
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import minuit
>>> # (no error messages!)

If that worked, move on to the Getting Started Guide and have fun with your new function minimizer!

4. If something goes wrong

If you have any suggestions for improving the installation process, please add it to the Issues Tab.

Be sure to tell me whether the following files exist:

Minuit-1_7_9/src/.libs/liblcg_Minuit.*
pyminuit/build
/home/username/lib/liblcg_Minuit*
/home/username/lib/python/minuit.so
/usr/lib/liblcg_Minuit*
/usr/lib/python/minuit.so

and whether you are attempting to install in the standard or a non-standard location.