IPython, Sage, Dependencies, Anaconda, and Package Integration?

Question

I've just started using IPython for interactive development and exploratory research, which I've found really exciting with all the cool features and possibilities. I am using the Anaconda package manager to manage dependencies, which includes IPython.

From what I've read, one goal of the IPython team is to eventually integrate Sage Math (CAS) into IPython, as a cell magic. Does anyone know if this is still under development? Or rather, if I wanted to use Sage now, is writing an extension the only way to do this [1]?

[1] https://github.com/ipython/ipython/wiki/Extensions-Index

Also, if I install additional packages for scientific development, not included in the Anaconda distribution, is that as easy as just pip or do I have to go through a Anaconda package build to handle dependencies and such? If I were only using IPython, I could understand just doing easy_install or pip as recommended in the docs, but I believe that overwrites existing dependencies within Anaconda. If I use pip, how does that affect Anaconda dependencies if I do not install in an Anaconda environment, which I take is the equivalent as virtualenv.py, and is this the way to also set up revision control (i.e. Mercurial)?

To clarify, I do not want to run IPython from within Sage, I want to run Sage, as a CAS, from within IPython. I'd rather go the Sage approach of integrating domain specific languages. Or in contrast, will IPython extensions replace Sage?

I'm a self taught programmer, not a professional software developer. As an engineer, I am used to Matlab, Mathematica, and commercial solutions, that allow me to abstract away the plumbing. I'm trying to wrap my mind around getting everything glued together, but it's like a mix of spaghetti soup and a dynamic link library, due to lack of knowledge. I'm probably using the wrong approach.

What I want is Anaconda/Enthought package management (IPython, pandas, etc..), custom rolled Sage through hooks/extensions or magics, extensions to packages not included in Anaconda (i.e. Matlab see [1] above), and revision control with Git and Mercurial. How would professional developers set this up on a Mac or Linux box?

Answer 1

Answering the first question:

Sage is a huge collection of mathematical software, including IPython. There's no way we'd integrate all of that into IPython.

Possibly what you've heard is that we're going to integrate Sage-style 'interacts' into IPython. That's where you have a slider to control the value of some input variable, and the output updates as you move it around, based on a calculation written in Python. That is still on our roadmap to add to IPython.

Another possibility is that you're thinking of SymPy, a Python-based CAS. SymPy works well within IPython, especially if you call sympy.init_printing() to get the fancy representations of expressions.

Answer 2

I wrote an IPython extension to load Sage customizations into the IPython notebook---in fact, that's how many of the customizations to IPython are done for the normal Sage interface. It basically turns the IPython notebook into an interface to Sage (e.g., preparsing is done, etc.).

You do need to run it from Sage's copy of IPython, though. Just start the IPython notebook:

sage -ipython notebook

and then load the sage extension in a cell:

%load_ext sage.misc.sage_extension

Pretty soon we'll upgrade to IPython 1.0 (I've made the changes necessary, and it needs to be reviewed). If you want to run IPython 1.0 already, email the sage-support mailing list and I'll post instructions.

To answer your other question, Sage includes many packages that are not available in Anaconda. Sage depends on these packages heavily for many features. I suppose there is a possibility getting Sage and its dependencies distributed with something like Anaconda, but no one is working on that as far as I know. There is some work on packaging Sage up for different linux distributions and replacing the package manager for Sage.