2 Installation

PyFDAP was developed as an open source graphical user interface (GUI) in Python with PyQT and SciPy in order to make it accessible and extendable across the most frequently used operating systems Ubuntu Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows. Over the past two decades, Python has become a widely used scientific programming language and provides PyFDAP users with enormous resources and easily addable software packages (Millman and Aivazis2011).

All software packages needed to run PyFDAP are freely available. PyFDAP can be installed using stand-alone executables (see Section 2.1). Alternatively, users can run the PyFDAP packages from source (see Section 2.2), which offers the possibility to edit the PyFDAP code and to import new modules.

2.1 Running PyFDAP using stand-alone executables

Download the executable that fits your system from http://people.tuebingen.mpg.de/mueller-lab/. This is suitable for users who want to analyze FDAP experiments and do not need to customize the PyFDAP code. A list of currently available binary files and systems on which the binaries have been tested can be found in Table 1. If there is no executable available for your system, we recommend using the Anaconda installation approach explained in Section 2.2.1.


OS Version 32-bit64-bit Executable Test System
Linux 3.13.0-36-generic × pyfdap_v1.0_Linux_64bit Thinkpad x230






Mac OS X 10.9.2 × pyfdap_v1.0_OSX_64bit.app MacMini6,1






Mac OS X 10.9.2 × pyfdap_v1.0_OSX_64bit.app MacBookPro10,2






Mac OS X 10.9.5 × pyfdap_v1.0_OSX_64bit.app MacBookPro8,1






Mac OS X 10.9.5 × pyfdap_v1.0_OSX_64bit.app MacBookPro8,2






Mac OS X 10.9.5 × pyfdap_v1.0_OSX_64bit.app MacBookPro10,2






Windows 7 × pyfdap_v1.0_Win_32bit.exe Samsung N150






Windows 8 × pyfdap_v1.0_Win_64bit.exe Dell OPTIPLEX 9010

Table 1: List of systems on which the currently available PyFDAP executables have been tested. The executables might also run on systems not listed here.

2.2 Running PyFDAP from source

In order to be able to edit the PyFDAP code and to import new modules, it is necessary to download and install all necessary Python packages and to run PyFDAP from source. There are two ways to do this:

  1. Download and install the Anaconda Python distribution (see Section 2.2.1).
  2. Download and install all Python packages manually (see Section 2.2.2).

2.2.1 Running PyFDAP using the Anaconda distribution

Anaconda is a bundle of Python packages and includes all packages needed to run PyFDAP. To install Anaconda, follow these steps:

2.2.2 Running PyFDAP using a manual Python installation

In this section, we explain how to manually install all necessary Python packages on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows in order to run PyFDAP. The manual installation allows for customizability as well as debugging options. The instructions provided here describe the installation process for computers that currently do not have Python installed. For computers on which Python is already installed, the installation of PyFDAP will differ from the instructions provided below. We recommend running PyFDAP using a Debian-based Linux distribution such as Ubuntu since installing Python packages is more straightforward using such operating systems.

Manual installation under Linux Here we explain how to manually install and run PyFDAP on Linux operating systems. The following instructions are only suitable for Debian-based Linux distributions and have been tested on Ubuntu Linux 12.04, 13.10, and 14.04 (64-bit). Installation steps may vary between different versions and distributions of Linux (e.g. RedHat-based Linux distributions such as Fedora or Suse).

Manual installation under Mac OS X Here we explain how to manually install and run PyFDAP on Mac OS X. The following instructions have only been tested on Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.8 (64-bit) and Mac OS X Maverick 10.9.2, 10.9.4, 10.9.5 (64-bit). Installation steps may vary between different versions of OS X.

Manual installation under Microsoft Windows Here we explain how to manually install and start PyFDAP on Microsoft Windows. The following instructions have only been tested for Microsoft Windows 8 (64-bit) and may differ for other versions.

2.3 Enabling video output for PyFDAP

PyFDAP can convert image series into video files for presentation purposes (see also Section 3.4.1). This requires the installation of MEncoder:

Under Linux, open a Terminal and type

sudo apt-get install mencoder

If you have followed the manual installation instructions for OS X (see Section 2.2.2), open a Terminal and type

brew install mplayer

More information about data output in PyFDAP can be found in Section 3.4.