From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Wed Mar 03 2010 - 10:41:49 CST

Hi,
  Yes, the VMD build you're using was compiled without Python support.
I expect to revisit enabling Python in the standard builds for VMD 1.8.8.
Historically this has been on-again/off-again based on the stability of
the combination of Tcl/Tk and Python (they have to get along well,
to enable safe use of the python TkInter module for example).

If you already have a Python installation on your machine that you would
like to use, then you may be best off compiling VMD from source against
your existing Python install. This is particularly true for people that
have significant python library installations tied to their local version.
Compiling VMD isn't all that difficult, but you do have to compile several
related packages, and the VMD plugins, as described here:
  http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/doxygen/compiling.html#compiling

Cheers,
  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

On Tue, Mar 02, 2010 at 01:07:51PM -0600, radak004_at_umn.edu wrote:
> Hello VMD community,
>
> Long-time user, first time poster.
>
> I am currently trying to run the python interpreter within vmd 1.8.7 (LINUX
> 32bit with openGL) and Fedora 10 but get the following errors:
>
> from the command line (i.e > vmd -python)
> ERROR) Sorry, this version of VMD was compiled with Python support disabled
> ERROR) Skipping startup script because Python could not be started.
>
> from the vmd terminal (i.e. vmd > gopython)
> invalid command name "gopython"
>
> I can see from the long line of posts on this subject that this means my
> version of vmd was not compiled with Python support. What is the easiest
> way to remedy this?
>
> Are there now easily downloadable binaries compiled with python support?
> This was apparently on someone's todo list a while back.
>
> OR
>
> Is there a low hassle way for me to compile vmd from source such that
> python works correctly? From other discussions I'm guessing the short
> answer to this is "no."
>
> OR
>
> I think my purposes could be equally met by importing vmd into python as a
> module. Is this more easily accomplished than the options above? I haven't
> been able to find detailed directions as to how to set this up, not that I
> looked too hard.
>
> Thanks in advance for your time,
> Brian
>
> --
> Brian Radak
>
> University of Minnesota - Twin Cities
> Dept. of Chemistry and Chemical Physics
> Teaching Assistant, CHEM 1021/1022/8551
> Graduate Student, York Research Group
> 65 Kolthoff Hall
> 207 Pleasant St. SE
> Minneapolis, MN 55455
> radak004_at_umn.edu
> (612) 625-6317 (office)
> (612) 626-7541 (fax)

-- 
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