# Installation Requirements

**URL:** https://discourse.paraview.org/t/installation-requirements/250
**Category:** Development
**Tags:** python
**Created:** [June 28, 2018, 4:13pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/installation-requirements/250 "2018-06-28T16:13:41Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![olesenm](https://discourse.paraview.org/user_avatar/discourse.paraview.org/olesenm/32/17416_2.png) [@olesenm](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/olesenm)
#### Post date: [June 28, 2018, 4:13pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/installation-requirements/250/1 "2018-06-28T16:13:41Z")

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I’ve been trying building ParaView with spack. When I specify the `+python` variant (ie, compile ParaView with python support), it adds a few more items to its packaging requirements.

```auto
depends_on('python@2:2.8', when='+python')
depends_on('py-numpy', when='+python', type='run')
depends_on('py-matplotlib', when='+python', type='run')

```

Is there a ParaView reason for having dependencies on the python `numpy` and `matplotlib`? Or was this just someone handling some internal packaging issue, or providing something convenient for themselves?

Is there some convenient list or file of what ParaView with python would actually need?

Cheers,  
/mark

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### Author: ![cory.quammen](https://discourse.paraview.org/user_avatar/discourse.paraview.org/cory.quammen/32/11193_2.png) [@cory.quammen](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/cory.quammen)
#### Post date: [June 28, 2018, 5:19pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/installation-requirements/250/2 "2018-06-28T17:19:41Z")

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> Is there a ParaView reason for having dependencies on the python numpy and matplotlib?

Yes, the adapter between VTK objects and numpy arrays requires numpy and matplotlib is used for some text rendering operations (IIRC) as well as the Python View.

> Is there some convenient list or file of what ParaView with python would actually need?

There is a `requirements.txt` file in the build directory. These include modules needed for ParaViewWeb that you wouldn’t need for ParaView desktop (`wslink`, `Twisted`, `autobahn`). numpy and matplotlib are the biggies I can think of. `mpi4py` is build with ParaView I believe.

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<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![olesenm](https://discourse.paraview.org/user_avatar/discourse.paraview.org/olesenm/32/17416_2.png) [@olesenm](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/olesenm)
#### Post date: [June 29, 2018, 6:11am UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/installation-requirements/250/3 "2018-06-29T06:11:17Z")

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> There is a requirements.txt file in the build directory.

Thanks. I was looking through the source directories, not the build directory for any requirements.  
For my build, matplotlib is indeed a requirement, but it looks like numpy isn’t (but maybe nice to have).