The fastest and easiest way to install the ActivePapers framework on your computer is to start by installing the Anaconda Python distribution. Note that you need Anaconda version 1.7 or later. Once you have Anaconda installed, type the following command into a terminal window:
pip install tempdir ActivePapers.Py
In case you have multiple Python installations on your machine, make
sure you use the command pip from the Anaconda installation.
On Debian Linux and derivatives such as Ubuntu, you can in principle install all the prerequisites using
apt-get install python-h5py
and then proceed as above with
pip install tempdir ActivePapers.Py
However, the current stable Debian distribution (7.x, code name “wheezy”) contains a rather old version of h5py which is not sufficient for using ActivePapers. Until Debian updates h5py to version 2.2, you can use
apt-get install python-dev python-pip python-numpy libhdf5-7 libhdf5-dev
followed by
pip install h5py tempdir ActivePapers.Py
If you prefer to work with a different Python installation, make sure you have the following packages installed on your computer:
You can then install ActivePapers.Py by following the instructions given in the source code distribution.
Please note that Python 2.x and Python 3.x are somewhat different languages and not fully compatible. While the ActivePapers framework works with both versions, the code in a given ActivePaper may well require one or the other version specifically. At this time (autumn 2013), Python 2.x is still more widely used than Python 3.x in the scientific community.