From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Wed Feb 04 2009 - 16:31:09 CST

Maxim,
  First off, there's no need to send duplicate messages to the mailing list,
this just wastes bandwidth and irritates everyone that gets two copies.
Any particular query one asks may take a day or more to get answered
since everyone has their own schedules and may only read email a couple
of times per day.

On to your question about Python-enabled builds.

If you're only planning on using the basic Python modules that are
part of the core of Python, along with the VMD python bindings, then
you can use one of the VMD binaries I produce that has Python enabled,
along with a copy of the Python libraries that match that build. I can
provide these for you. This works for simple Python scripting, but
is not appropriate if you've got a big collection of special Python modules
you use indepdently of VMD.

If you're planning on using VMD in concert with an existing Python
library you've built up on your system, you'll need to compile from source,
as there are a long list of interdependencies between the python modules
and the other software components that a specific installation is based on,
and the version of Python we use locally is almost certainly not the same
as yours. So, in such a case, you will need to compile VMD from source
code. It's not terribly difficult, but it does take a little time since
you also have to compile (or have already installed) Tcl, Tk, FLTK, and
Python on your system, along with any optional VMD features you wish to use.

A third option exists, in which you can compile VMD itself as a python
module, such that you can load it into your own python installation for
the purpose of using its atom selection features, file I/O, and other
features, for analysis scripting of various types.

Let me know which route matches your needs and I can assist you further.

Cheers,
  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

On Wed, Feb 04, 2009 at 10:19:49AM -0500, Maxim Paliy wrote:
> Dear VMD experts.
> I need to have python available in VMD, and I wonder how one can get it..
>
> It says in the manual , that it should be already available,
> however, when I run vmd -python or say "gopython" inside vmd,
> it tells me "Sorry, this version of VMD was compiled with Python support
> disabled"
>
> I have tried three versions, all installed from downloaded binaries
> LINUXIA64, version 1.8.6 (April 6, 2007)
> LINUX, version 1.8.7a23 (April 23, 2008)
> WIN32, version 1.8.6 (April 7, 2007)
> but none of them works.
>
> Thanks a lot in advance for any suggestions,
> Maxim
>

-- 
NIH Resource for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics
Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
University of Illinois, 405 N. Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
Email: johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu                 Phone: 217-244-3349
  WWW: http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/      Fax: 217-244-6078