How to install Scipy with pip on Mac Mountain Lion OS X v10.8

Question

I'm having serious difficulty installing Scipy with pip on Mountain Lion. I've tried:

sudo pip install -e git+https://github.com/scipy/scipy#egg=scipy-dev

As suggested in various places on the web.

This leads to errors like:

ld: library not found for -lgcc
lipo: can't figure out the architecture type of: /var/tmp//ccC2HLVs.out

and several warnings (I assume not serious) before the errors.

Does anybody have any suggestions?

Answer 1

Scipy is also available now via a homebrew tap. If you have homebrew installed:

brew tap samueljohn/python
brew install scipy

See more info here: homebrew-python

Answer 2

Pip has difficulties with scipy on OS X in general. It is not trivial to install from the sources, so I advise against it. In OS X you have a few better options:

• Scipy superpack, a bunch of precompiled binaries
• Enthought Canopy (free or another) has already everything you'll need (numpy, scipy, matplotlib, etc.)
• Anaconda, a free scientific python distribution with probably all the packages you'll ever need.
• MacPorts, a comprehensive and flexible package manager that allows you to install and maintain a python distribution
• Homebrew, another popular package manager for OS X