From: Axel Kohlmeyer (akohlmey_at_cmm.chem.upenn.edu)
Date: Tue Jun 10 2008 - 07:03:30 CDT

On Tue, 10 Jun 2008, Peter Jones wrote:

PJ> Hi all,
PJ>
PJ>
PJ> I am trying to get IED going on MacOSX 10.3.9. I have downloaded and
PJ> unpacked the relevant pylib.macosx.tar.gz, set the $PYTHONHOME environment
PJ> variable to the path to the lib_MACOSX-numpy directory and installed VMD
PJ> 1.8.3. However I still get the error-

why VMD 1.8.3???

PJ>
PJ> vmd > gopython
PJ> Info) Starting Python...
PJ> Numeric Python module _numpy not found; vmdnumpy module not available.
PJ> ImportError: Failure linking new module
PJ> Info) Text interpreter now Python
PJ> Traceback (most recent call last):
PJ> File "<string>", line 1, in ?
PJ> File "/Applications/VMD
PJ> 1.8.3.app/Contents/vmd/scripts/python/Tkinter.py", line 59, in ?
PJ> import _tkinter # If this fails your Python may not be configured for Tk
PJ> ImportError: No module named _tkinter
PJ>
PJ>
PJ> I have tried quite a few times to get IED going on Linux boxes and Macs but
PJ> never succeeded, so any help would be greatly appreciated,

i don't know much about macs, but on linux i've been having the
best experiences with self-compiled vmd and everything using
the "native" packages (with dynamic linking). that renders the
resulting executable rather non-portable between distributions
and releases, so to have a widely compatible distribution of VMD,
the provided binaries cannot link dynamically, but due to its
wrapping of dynamical objects python implicitly re-introduces
this non-portability. IED not only uses python but through python
also Tk, which VMD uses itself, so you have to make sure that
_everything_ is in sync. if you have a fedora linux box, you
may want to try out the rpms that i deposited into the biocore
(not fully up-to-date i have to confess).

i suspect that on different mac os versions there are similar
issues and perhaps there are some additional dynamic linkers
issues that you are running in.

cheers,
    axel.

PJ>
PJ>
PJ> thankyou,
PJ>
PJ>
PJ> Peter Jones
PJ>

-- 
=======================================================================
Axel Kohlmeyer   akohlmey_at_cmm.chem.upenn.edu   http://www.cmm.upenn.edu
   Center for Molecular Modeling   --   University of Pennsylvania
Department of Chemistry, 231 S.34th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6323
tel: 1-215-898-1582,  fax: 1-215-573-6233,  office-tel: 1-215-898-5425
=======================================================================
If you make something idiot-proof, the universe creates a better idiot.