Installing a python package/tool by a non root user

Question

(1) I have to install one python package (HTSeq) but i dont have root privileges.

The package need python 2.4 or latest version. We have python 2.3 on our cluster.

Answer 1

1) You have to install setuptools (it is necessary to run setup.py of your HTSeq).

Download sources tar.gz setuptools-0.6c11.tar.gz, unpack it, and then do the steps like you installed python2.7, but in the folder where you unpacked setuptools sources:

./configure --prefix=/home/amit/tools/localpython 
make 
make install

2) When you will install setuptools, a easy_install executable will apear in python2.7/scripts/ folder. You can use it to install packages easily:

/home/amit/tools/localpython/bin/python2.7/scripts/easy_install HTSeq

it will automatically find the package and will download and install it for you along with all dependencies.

Answer 2

Setuptools is another requirement which you need to install that package.

One option is to use virtualenv to create a contained python environment. This can be made everywhere and is owned by the user who creates it.

To install virtualenv without admin rights (from this answer):

Download tar.gz of the latest version of virtualenv. Unpack it. You don't even need to install it, just run virtualenv.py, for example:

wget http://pypi.python.org/packages/source/v/virtualenv/virtualenv-1.7.1.2.tar.gz
tar -xzf virtualenv-1.7.1.2.tar.gz
/home/amit/tools/localpython/bin/python2.7 virtualenv-1.7.1.2/virtualenv.py env

env/bin/pip install HTSeq
env/bin/pip install numpy

Now run your script using the python binary in the virtual environment:

env/bin/python myscript.py