Installation

Dependencies

galpy requires the numpy, scipy, and matplotlib packages; these must be installed or the code will not be able to be imported.

Optional dependencies are: astropy for Quantity support (used throughout galpy when installed), astroquery for the Orbit.from_name initialization method (to initialize using a celestial object’s name), numexpr for plotting arbitrary expressions of Orbit quantities, and pynbody for use of SnapshotRZPotential and InterpSnapshotRZPotential.

To be able to use the fast C extensions for orbit integration and action-angle calculations, the GNU Scientific Library (GSL) needs to be installed (see below).

With conda

The easiest way to install the latest released version of galpy is using conda or pip (see below):

conda install galpy -c conda-forge

or:

conda config --add channels conda-forge
conda install galpy

Installing with conda will automatically install the required dependencies (numpy, scipy, and matplotlib) and the GSL, but not the optional dependencies.

With pip

galpy can also be installed using pip. Since v1.6.0, the pip installation will install binary wheels for most major operating systems (Mac, Windows, and Linux) and commonly-used Python 3 versions. When this is the case, you do not need to separately install the GSL.

When you are on a platform or Python version for which no binary wheel is available, pip will compile the source code on your machine. Some advanced features require the GNU Scientific Library (GSL; see below). If you want to use these with a pip-from-source install, install the GSL first (or install it later and re-install using the upgrade command. Then do:

pip install galpy

or to upgrade without upgrading the dependencies:

pip install -U --no-deps galpy

Installing with pip will automatically install the required dependencies (numpy, scipy, and matplotlib), but not the optional dependencies.

Latest version

The latest updates in galpy can be installed using:

pip install -U --no-deps git+git://github.com/jobovy/galpy.git#egg=galpy

or:

pip install -U --no-deps --install-option="--prefix=~/local" git+git://github.com/jobovy/galpy.git#egg=galpy

for a local installation. The latest updates can also be installed from the source code downloaded from github using the standard python setup.py installation:

python setup.py install

or:

python setup.py install --prefix=~/local

for a local installation.

Note that these latest-version commands all install directly fromm the source code and thus require you to have the GSL and a C compiler installed to build the C extension(s). If you are having issues with this, you can also download a binary wheel for the latest master version, which are available here for Mac/Windows wheels and here for Linux wheels (note that you need to be logged into GitHub to access the artifacts, which otherwise just show up as a gray non-link). To install these wheels, click on the latest run, download the “artifact” for the platform/Python version that you are using, unzip the file, and install the wheel with:

pip install WHEEL_FILE.whl

Installing from a branch

If you want to use a feature that is currently only available in a branch, do:

pip install -U --no-deps git+git://github.com/jobovy/galpy.git@dev#egg=galpy

to, for example, install the dev branch.

Note that we currently do not build binary wheels for branches other than master. If you really wanted this, you could fork galpy, edit the GitHub Actions workflow file that generates the wheel to include the branch that you want to build (in the on: section), and push to GitHub; then the binary wheel will be built as part of your fork.

Installing from source on Windows

Tip

You can install a pre-compiled Windows “wheel” of the latest master version that is automatically built on AppVeyor for all recent Python versions. Navigate to the latest master build, click on the first job and then on “Artifacts”, download the wheel for your version of Python, and install with pip install WHEEL_FILE.whl. Similar wheels are also available here (see above), but require you to be logged into GitHub.

Versions >1.3 should be able to be compiled on Windows systems using the Microsoft Visual Studio C compiler (>= 2015). For this you need to first install the GNU Scientific Library (GSL), for example using Anaconda (see below). Similar to on a UNIX system, you need to set paths to the header and library files where the GSL is located. On Windows, using the CDM commandline, this is done as:

set INCLUDE=%CONDA_PREFIX%\Library\include;%INCLUDE%
set LIB=%CONDA_PREFIX%\Library\lib;%LIB%
set LIBPATH=%CONDA_PREFIX%\Library\lib;%LIBPATH%

If you are using the Windows PowerShell (which newer versions of the Anaconda prompt might set as the default), do:

$env:INCLUDE="$env:CONDA_PREFIX\Library\include"
$env:LIB="$env:CONDA_PREFIX\Library\lib"
$env:LIBPATH="$env:CONDA_PREFIX\Library\lib"

where in this example CONDA_PREFIX is the path of your current conda environment (the path that ends in \ENV_NAME). If you have installed the GSL somewhere else, adjust these paths (but do not use YOUR_PATH\include\gsl or YOUR_PATH\lib\gsl as the paths, simply use YOUR_PATH\include and YOUR_PATH\lib).

To compile with OpenMP on Windows, you have to install Intel OpenMP via:

conda install -c anaconda intel-openmp

and then to compile the code:

python setup.py install

If you encounter any issue related to OpenMP during compilation, you can do:

python setup.py install --no-openmp

Installing from source with Intel Compiler

Compiling galpy with an Intel Compiler can give significant performance improvements on 64-bit Intel CPUs. Moreover students can obtain a free copy of an Intel Compiler at this link.

To compile the galpy C extensions with the Intel Compiler on 64bit MacOS/Linux do:

python setup.py build_ext --inplace --compiler=intelem

and to compile the galpy C extensions with the Intel Compiler on 64bit Windows do:

python setup.py build_ext --inplace --compiler=intel64w

Then you can simply install with:

python setup.py install

or other similar installation commands, or you can build your own wheels with:

python setup.py sdist bdist_wheel

Installing the TorusMapper code

Warning

The TorusMapper code is not part of any of galpy’s binary distributions (installed using conda or pip); if you want to gain access to the TorusMapper, you need to install from source as explained in this section and above.

Since v1.2, galpy contains a basic interface to the TorusMapper code of Binney & McMillan (2016). This interface uses a stripped-down version of the TorusMapper code, that is not bundled with the galpy code, but kept in a fork of the original TorusMapper code. Installation of the TorusMapper interface is therefore only possible when installing from source after downloading or cloning the galpy code and using the python setup.py install method above.

To install the TorusMapper code, before running the installation of galpy, navigate to the top-level galpy directory (which contains the setup.py file) and do:

git clone https://github.com/jobovy/Torus.git galpy/actionAngle/actionAngleTorus_c_ext/torus
cd galpy/actionAngle/actionAngleTorus_c_ext/torus
git checkout galpy
cd -

Then proceed to install galpy using the python setup.py install technique or its variants as usual.

Installation FAQ

What is the required numpy version?

galpy should mostly work for any relatively recent version of numpy, but some advanced features, including calculating the normalization of certain distribution functions using Gauss-Legendre integration require numpy version 1.7.0 or higher.

I get warnings like “galpyWarning: libgalpy C extension module not loaded, because libgalpy.so image was not found”

This typically means that the GNU Scientific Library (GSL) was unavailable during galpy’s installation, causing the C extensions not to be compiled. Most of the galpy code will still run, but slower because it will run in pure Python. The code requires GSL versions >= 1.14. If you believe that the correct GSL version is installed for galpy, check that the library can be found during installation (see below).

I get the warning “galpyWarning: libgalpy_actionAngleTorus C extension module not loaded, because libgalpy_actionAngleTorus.so image was not found”

This is typically because the TorusMapper code was not compiled, because it was unavailable during installation. This code is only necessary if you want to use galpy.actionAngle.actionAngleTorus. See above for instructions on how to install the TorusMapper code. Note that in recent versions of galpy, you should not be getting this warning, unless you set verbose=True in the configuration file.

How do I install the GSL?

Certain advanced features require the GNU Scientific Library (GSL), with action calculations requiring version 1.14 or higher. The easiest way to install this is using its Anaconda build:

conda install -c conda-forge gsl

If you do not want to go that route, on a Mac, the next easiest way to install the GSL is using Homebrew as:

brew install gsl --universal

You should be able to check your version using (on Mac/Linux):

gsl-config --version

On Linux distributions with apt-get, the GSL can be installed using:

apt-get install libgsl0-dev

or on distros with yum, do:

yum install gsl-devel

The galpy installation fails because of C compilation errors

galpy’s installation can fail due to compilation errors, which look like:

error: command 'gcc' failed with exit status 1

or:

error: command 'clang' failed with exit status 1

or:

error: command 'cc' failed with exit status 1

This is typically because the compiler cannot locate the GSL header files or the GSL library. You can tell the installation about where you’ve installed the GSL library by defining (for example, when the GSL was installed under /usr; the LD_LIBRARY_PATH part of this may or may not be necessary depending on your system):

export CFLAGS=-I/usr/include
export LDFLAGS=-L/usr/lib
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=-L/usr/lib

or:

setenv CFLAGS -I/usr/include
setenv LDFLAGS -L/usr/lib
setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH -L/usr/lib

depending on your shell type (change the actual path to the include and lib directories that have the gsl directory). If you already have CFLAGS, LDFLAGS, and LD_LIBRARY_PATH defined you just have to add the '-I/usr/include' and '-L/usr/lib' to them.

If you are on a Mac or UNIX system (e.g., Linux), you can find the correct CFLAGS and LDFLAGS/LD_LIBRARY_path entries by doing:

gsl-config --cflags
gsl-config --libs

(don’t include the -lgsl lgslcblas portion of the latter output.)

I have defined CFLAGS, LDFLAGS, and LD_LIBRARY_PATH, but the compiler does not seem to include these and still returns with errors

This typically happens if you install using sudo, but have defined the CFLAGS etc. environment variables without using sudo. Try using sudo -E instead, which propagates your own environment variables to the sudo user.

I’m having issues with OpenMP

galpy uses OpenMP to parallelize various of the computations done in C. galpy can be installed without OpenMP by specifying the option --no-openmp when running the python setup.py commands above:

python setup.py install --no-openmp

or when using pip as follows:

pip install -U --no-deps --install-option="--no-openmp" git+git://github.com/jobovy/galpy.git#egg=galpy

or:

pip install -U --no-deps --install-option="--prefix=~/local" --install-option="--no-openmp" git+git://github.com/jobovy/galpy.git#egg=galpy

for a local installation. This might be useful if one is using the clang compiler, which is the new default on macs with OS X (>= 10.8), but does not support OpenMP. clang might lead to errors in the installation of galpy such as:

ld: library not found for -lgomp

clang: error: linker command failed with exit code 1 (use -v to see invocation)

If you get these errors, you can use the commands given above to install without OpenMP, or specify to use gcc by specifying the CC and LDSHARED environment variables to use gcc. Note that clang does not seem to have this issue anymore in more recent versions, but it still does not support OpenMP.

Configuration file

Since v1.2, galpy uses a configuration file to set a small number of configuration variables. This configuration file is parsed using ConfigParser/configparser. It is currently used:

  • to set a default set of distance and velocity scales (ro and vo throughout galpy) for conversion between physical and internal galpy unit
  • to decide whether to use seaborn plotting with galpy’s defaults (which affects all plotting after importing galpy.util.bovy_plot),
  • to specify whether output from functions or methods should be given as an astropy Quantity with units as much as possible or not, and whether or not to use astropy’s coordinate transformations (these are typically somewhat slower than galpy’s own coordinate transformations, but they are more accurate and more general)
  • to set the level of verbosity of galpy’s warning system (the default verbose=False turns off non-crucial warnings).

The current configuration file therefore looks like this:

[normalization]
ro = 8.
vo = 220.

[plot]
seaborn-bovy-defaults = False

[astropy]
astropy-units = False
astropy-coords = True

[warnings]
verbose = False

where ro is the distance scale specified in kpc, vo the velocity scale in km/s, and the setting is to not return output as a Quantity. These are the current default settings.

A user-wide configuration file should be located at $HOME/.galpyrc. This user-wide file can be overridden by a $PWD/.galpyrc file in the current directory. If no configuration file is found, the code will automatically write the default configuration to $HOME/.galpyrc. Thus, after installing galpy, you can simply use some of its simplest functionality (e.g., integrate an orbit), and after this the default configuration file will be present at $HOME/.galpyrc. If you want to change any of the settings (for example, you want Quantity output), you can edit this file. The default configuration file can also be found here.