How to install Vowpal Wabbit python interface

Question

VW recently added a python interface, however I am having trouble finding instructions for how to install it. If I install VW from homebrew (brew install vowpal-wabbit) and I open python, and call

import pyvw

I get an ImportError.

Answer 1

I was able to successfully install the Python interface to VW using the following steps. Note that this is on an Ubuntu 14.04 machine with Anaconda Python 2.7.10.

1. Prerequisites: Boost & miscellaneous Python development libraries:

   sudo apt-get install libboost-all-dev   
   sudo apt-get install python-dev libxml2-dev libxslt-dev   
   

2. git clone the Vowpal Wabbit repo & enter the python directory.
3. make Vowpal Wabbit & test your installation using python test.py.

import pyvw should work from within a Python console as well.

Answer 2

pip install vowpalwabbit

should give you the latest version. then do

from vowpalwabbit import sklearn_vw

This will give you scikit's vowpalwabbit