How do I initialize IPython installed using PIP?

Question

I'm running PepperMint Linux and I've installed IPython using pip but I can't initialize it:

$ ipython
bash: /usr/bin/ipython: No such file or directory

Although pip says it's correctly installed:

$ pip show ipython
---
Name: ipython
Version: 1.2.1
Location: /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages
Requires:

This folder doesn't seem to have any executable files, only source codes:

$ ls /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/IPython
config          core         extensions   frontend.pyc  __init__.pyc  __main__.py   nbformat  scripts    testing
consoleapp.py   display.py   external     html          kernel        __main__.pyc  parallel  sphinxext  utils
consoleapp.pyc  display.pyc  frontend.py  __init__.py   lib           nbconvert     qt        terminal

How can I initialize IPython shell? Is it even possible from a pip install, or does pip only download IPython source code?

Answer 1

If the modules were installed under /usr/local, then it's likely the ipython script was installed in the same way. So try running:

$ /usr/local/bin/ipython

If that works, it would seem /usr/local/bin is not in your $PATH for some reason, so you need to fix that if you want to start ipython without specifying the full path (or you could just create an alias for it).