The smallest python distribtion to run Sympy, Scipy, Numpy and Matplotlib

Question

Update: I tried @user2258766 suggestion on miniconda. It was initially very promising. But, when I have installed scipy numpy matplotlib sympy, the miniconda folder size quickly grows to 1G.

Does this mean that the minimal size of the installation is 1G if I want to use the 4 packages I mentioned. Why they are so large? Is it still possible to shrink the installation size further?

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The Scipy website recommended Anaconda.

But it installs so many un-relevant packages for me.

Is there a smallest distribution I can use?

I only want Scipy, Sympy, Numpy, and Maplotlib, not others.

Another relevant questions is, why there are so many dependencies between these Python packages?

I was programming in Java, and now feel a little bit uncomfortable to see these Python packages (Scipy e.g.) are so tightly relatively to so many other packages. Why is that the case? A reasonable explanation could possible make more comfortable to start coding in Python.

Thanks.

I am using Windows. Thanks. I was using Java and am new to Python.

Answer 1

I'd suggest downloading miniconda: http://conda.pydata.org/miniconda.html#miniconda. Miniconda has a small footprint -- only python and conda are installed. Conda is a universal package manager for Python available on all OSes. You can now run the following:

conda create -n dev_env scipy numpy matplotlib sympy

The above will create a contained environment (named dev_env) with only the packages listed in the command. For more information on conda: http://conda.pydata.org/

Answer 2

Use these commands to reduce the install size of Python libraries, by removing unnecessary downloaded package files:

# Remove about 100-300 MB of unused tar.bz2 archive files
# https://stackoverflow.com/questions/40241133
conda clean --all

# Manually delete about 1-2GB of downloaded packages, after install. See:
# https://groups.google.com/a/continuum.io/d/msg/anaconda/CZjcQKVmIgo/Xx3tYBYzCgAJ
du -sh /path/to/Miniconda/pkgs/  # Just display the folder size
rm -rf /path/to/Miniconda/pkgs/

# Manually delete the useless Pip cache of downloaded files. See:
# https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9510474/removing-pips-cache
rm -rf ~/.cache/pip           # Linux
rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/pip/  # Mac OS X
del %LocalAppData%\pip\Cache  # Windows

Direct links for info:

• How to reduce the number of files in the anaconda directory?
• https://groups.google.com/a/continuum.io/d/msg/anaconda/CZjcQKVmIgo/Xx3tYBYzCgAJ
• Removing pip's cache?

Answer 3

Just install python and individually install each library.

This site has windows installers for all the packages you mentioned:

http://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/