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Adding missing Python libraries to Pythion in SD Desktop

By default, SD Desktop virtual machines based on Ubuntu 22.04 have Python 3.10.12 (python3) installed.

The Python3 in SD Desktop includes over 300 commonly used libraries like pandas, numpy and scipy. You can check the full list of installed libraries with command:

pip list

As there is huge amount of python libraries available, you quite often would like to use a library that is not available in SD Desktop.

In normal computers, the problem can be easily solved by adding the missing library using pip install command. However, as SD Desktop virtual machines don't have internet connection, you can't run pip install command in the way it is normally used.

If you plan to use a complex python environment in SD Desktop, the best solution is to build an Apptainer container that includes all the Python libraries you need, and import the container to SD Desktop.

However, if you need to add just few missing libraries, you could create a Python virtual environment to add the missing libraries. This tutorial demonstrates two ways to add missing Python libraries to the existing Python environment in SD desktop. As an example Python library we use SciKit-Optimize library.

Option 1: add-python-lib tool

Add-python-lib is a help tool tha can be used to add python libraries to a Python virtual environment in a SD Desktop virtual machine. This tool can be added to your virtual machine with the SD Sotware installer tool

Basic syntax of the command is:

add-python-lib search_term

The command looks for matching packages from the set of Python libraries that CSC has preloaded to SD Connect. Note that the preloaded set of libraries is very small (some hundreds) compared to the over 300 000 libraries available through pip. Please send a request to CSC Service Desk if you would need to have a library to be added to the selection. Note that all python libraries are not compatible with this approach.

The selected library will added to a Python virtual environment that locates in /shared-directory/sd-tools/python3-venv. This virtual environment is automatically created when add-python-lib is used for the first time.

In the case of SciKit-Optimize, you could do the installation with command:

add-python-lib scikit

or 

add-python-lib scikit_optimize

Note that search term SciKit-Optimize would not find any matching libraries as the search process is based on the names of pip installation files, that use only small case letters and where dashes (-) are replaced with under scores (_).

If the search term you used, matches several Python libraries, the tool shows you a list of libraries from which you can choose the library to be installed.

After that, the tool asks, if also the dependencies of the selected library should be installed. Normally you should try to install the dependencies too.

Once the installation is ready, you can switch to use the Python virtual environment with commands:

source /shared-directory/sd-tools/python3-venv/bin/activate
export PYTHONPATH=/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages:/usr/local/lib/python3.10/dist-packages

Option 2: Importing the module through SD Connect

1. Downloading installation file for SD Desktop

The first thing to do is to download a pip installation package file for the library you want to use. This you must do outside SD Desktop. You can search for the package from the Pypi repository or use pip download command if you have python3 installed in your machine (if possible, use Python version that matches with the Python version in SD Desktop).

1.1 Pypi repository

In the case of SciKit-Optimize, search in the Pypi repository gives you a project list. SciKit-Optimize is the first item on the list. You can continue to the SciKit-Optimize project page, where the download link provides a list of downloadable files. Here we could download the pre-build library file (scikit_optimize-0.10.2-py2.py3-none-any.whl ).

1.2 pip in command line

In your local machine, create a new directory, use pip download to download the installation files and then package this directory for transportation. In the case of user asund in a Linux or Mac, SciKit-Optimize library could be packaged with commands:

mkdir scikit-optimize
pip download scikit-optimize -d "/home/asund/scikit-optimize"
tar cvfz scikit-optimize.tgz scikit-optimize

1.3 Upload

Next you should upload the installation package (scikit_optimize-0.10.2-py2.py3-none-any.whl or scikit-optimize.tgz) to one of your data buckets in SD Connect.

2. Installing the library

After uploading the installation package to SD Connect, you will do rest of the installation steps in your SD Desktop environment.

  1. Open terminal session and create a Python virtual environment with command (this needs to be done only once):

    python3 -m venv $HOME/my-python

  2. Activate your Python virtual environment and add the location of default python libraries to PYTHONPATH environment variable: (this you must do each time you start a new terminal session)

    source $HOME/my-python/bin/activate
export PYTHONPATH=/usr/local/lib/python3.10/site-packages

  3. Open or refresh your DataGateway connection and copy scikit-optimize.tgz to your local disk.

  4. Uncompress the package

    tar zxvf scikit-optimize.tgz

  5. Move to the new directory:

    cd scikit-optimize

  6. Install the package:

    pip install scikit_optimize-0.9.0-py2.py3-none -any-whl -f ./ --no-index --no-deps

Now python (pointing to $HOME/my-python/bin/python) should contain scikit_optimize library.