Windows Installation

The SpacePy team currently provides binary “wheels” via PyPI so it can be installed on Windows without a compiler. Binaries are provided for 64-bit x86. pip install spacepy should find and install these binaries. These include the necessary Fortran runtime and the NASA CDF library.

Our recommended (but not required) Python distribution is Anaconda running 64-bit Python 3. Anaconda includes much of the scientific Python stack.

If you prefer to install the dependencies some way other than pip, see Dependencies via conda.

Wheels are built inside a VM running Windows 10 22H2 and should run on Windows 10 and 11.

Compiling

If a binary wheel is not available for your version of Python, pip will try to compile SpacePy. The only supported compiler is mingw32. Install it with:

conda install m2w64-gcc-fortran libpython

This is also required if installing from a source distribution or git checkout.

irbempy requires Fortran to compile and the only supported compiler is gnu95; this is the default and provided by m2w64-gcc-fortran.

If you have difficulties, it may be useful to reference the build scripts the SpacePy developers use.

NASA CDF

SpacePy binary wheels ship with a copy of the NASA CDF library and pycdf will use this copy if no other CDF libraries can be found.

If you build SpacePy from source or wish to use a different version of the library, you can download it from the NASA CDF page. Binary installers are available for Windows; be sure to pick the version (32-bit or 64-bit) that matches your Python installation.

NASA CDF can be installed either before or after installing SpacePy.

Dependencies via conda

Installation via pip will automatically install most Python dependencies (but not the NASA CDF library). They can also be installed from conda:

conda install numpy python-dateutil scipy matplotlib h5py

Standalone dependencies

Most of the SpacePy Dependencies have Windows installers available via their pages, but pip or conda are recommended instead.

Developers

If you want to build the documentation yourself (rather than using the documentation shipped with SpacePy), install sphinx and numpydoc. The easiest way is via pip:

pip install sphinx numpydoc

They are also available via conda:

conda install sphinx numpydoc