Installing data packages

nibabel includes some machinery for using optional data packages. We use data packages for some of the DICOM tests in nibabel. There are also data packages for standard template images, and other packages for components of nipy, including the main nipy package.

For more details on data package design, see Design of data packages for the nipy suite.

We haven’t yet made a nice automated way of downloading and installing the packages. For the moment you can find packages for the data and template files at http://nipy.sourceforge.net/data-packages.

Data package installation as an administrator

The installation procedure, for now, is very basic. For example, let us say that you want the ‘nipy-templates’ package at http://nipy.sourceforge.net/data-packages/nipy-templates-0.1.tar.gz . You simply download this archive, unpack it, and then run the standard python setup.py install on it. On a unix system this might look like:

curl -O http://nipy.sourceforge.net/data-packages/nipy-templates-0.1.tar.gz
tar zxvf nipy-templates-0.1.tar.gz
cd nipy-templates-0.1
sudo python setup.py install

On windows, download the file, extract the archive to a folder using the GUI, and then, using the windows shell or similar:

cd c:\path\to\extracted\files
python setup.py install

Non-administrator data package installation

The commands above assume you are installing into the default system directories. If you want to install into a custom directory, then (in python, or ipython, or a text editor) look at the help for nipy.utils.data.get_data_path() . There are instructions there for pointing your nipy installation to the installed data.

On unix

For example, say you installed with:

cd nipy-templates-0.1
python setup.py install --prefix=/home/my-user/some-dir

Then you may want to do make a file ~/.nipy/config.ini with the following contents:

[DATA]
/home/my-user/some-dir/share/nipy

On windows

Say you installed with (windows shell):

cd nipy-templates-0.1
python setup.py install --prefix=c:\some\path

Then first, find out your home directory:

python -c "import os; print os.path.expanduser('~')"

Let’s say that was c:\Documents and Settings\My User. Then, make a new file called c:\Documents and Settings\My User\_nipy\config.ini with contents:

[DATA]
c:\some\path\share\nipy