<!-- 
.. title: Building Numpy and Scipy on Ubuntu 12.04
.. slug: building-scipy-on-ubuntu-1204
.. date: 2013/04/19 23:12:28
.. tags: python, scipy, numpy 
.. link: 
.. description: 
-->

This post should help you build Numpy and Scipy from source on Ubuntu 12.04.

If you already have a Numpy/Scipy installation from the Ubuntu
repos, uninstall them.

    $ sudo apt-get remove python-scipy python-numpy

Get the latest source from [github](https://github.com/scipy).

    $ git clone https://github.com/scipy/scipy.git

    $ git clone https://github.com/numpy/numpy.git

Get all the needed tools to build Numpy, and Scipy. Except for `cython` which we will get next.
    
    $ sudo apt-get install python-dev python-nose libblas-dev liblaplack-dev build-essential gfortran gcc

The `cython` in the ubuntu repos is too old to build Scipy with. So we add a ppa with a more recent version. Then update apt.

    $ sudo apt-add-repository ppa:cython-dev/master-ppa
    ...
    $ sudo apt-get update
    ...
    $ sudo apt-get install cython  

You need to build Numpy first.
    
    $ cd ~/numpy
    $ sudo python setup.py install
    ...

Then Scipy.
    
    $ cd ~/scipy
    $ sudo python setup.py install
    ...

Then try it out.

    $ python

    >>> import numpy
    >>> import scipy