PyGSL: Python interface for GNU Scientific Library

PyGSL is a Python wrapper for the GNU Scientific Library (GSL). Nearly all modules are wrapped. A lot of tests are covering various functionality.

Please report it as a Github Issue if you find a bug. We are looking forward to contributions of new submodules, while maintaining the available code, and welcome pull requests.

PyGSL moved from Sourceforge to GitHub in 2021.

Requirements

To build the interface, you will need

GSL 2.x
Python 3.x
NumPy
an ANSI C compiler (e.g. gcc).

Installing PyGSL

Installing from a release archive

First, uninstall old versions of PyGSL. gsl-config must be on your path.

Make sure that the Python package wheel is installed:

pip install wheel

It is needed by the PyGSL installer.

You can download a .tar.gz file of the latest PyGSL release at https://github.com/pygsl/pygsl/releases. Then run:

tar -xvzf pygsl-x.y.z.tar.gz
cd pygsl-x.y.z
python setup.py gsl_wrappers
python setup.py config
sudo python setup.py install

This will install PyGSL system-wide; for a local install that does not require superuser privileges, specify an installation prefix, for example --prefix=/home/work/.local.

To set the GSL location explicitly, use the argument --gsl-prefix=/path/to/gsl.

PyGSL is installed to the Python packages path, and can be uninstalled by typing:

rm -r <python install path>/lib/python<version>/site-packages/pygsl

Installation via PyPI

PyGSL can also be installed using the pip package installer. SWIG is required to be installed and can usually be found via your distribution's package manager (for example, apt install swig).

To install PyGSL from PyPI, simply type:

pip install pygsl

To remove PyGSL, use:

pip uninstall pygsl

Using PyGSL

Do NOT test the interface in the distribution root directory! -- please install it first and then change to the tests directory and execute python run_test.py. If you want to execute it in the distribution root directory, please run python setup.py build_ext -i first! It will put the required binary files into the pygsl directory.

Just write in Python

import pygsl.sf
print("%g+/-%g"%pygsl.sf.erf(1))

import pygsl.rng
rng=pygsl.rng.rng()
print rng.gaussian(1.0)

You may set the environment variable LD_LIBRARY_PATH to find the gsl shared object.

Supported Platforms

Linux with Python 3.x and GSL 2.x
Mac OS X with Python 3.x and GSL 2.x
Win32 with Python 3.x and GSL 2.x

but is supposed to compile and run on any posix platform.

Currently it is being tested using GitHub Actions continuous integration on:

Python 3.8, numpy-latest and GSL 2.7.1 under Ubuntu Linux 22.04.2.

Testing

The directory test will contain several testsuites, based on Python unittest. Change to this directory to run the tests.

What is implemented (versus GSL 2.1):

Blas
BSplines
Chebyshev
Combination
Const
Diff
Eigen
Fit
Ieee
Integrate
Interpolation
Interpolation2D
Linalg
Math
Minimize
Multifit
Multifit_nlin
Multimin
Multiroots
Odeiv
Permutation
Poly
Qrng
Rng
Roots
Siman
Sf
Spline
Statistics

What is not implemented yet (versus GSL 1.10)

GSL Capabilites not yet wrapped by PyGSL
- Sorting
- N-tuples
GSL Capabilites partly implemented
- Discrete Hankel Transforms

See also the TODO file in the distribution.

For the exact function volume for a module, please type:

import pygsl.sf
dir(pygsl.sf)

You can do this with the other modules, too. The naming scheme is the same as in GSL.

Documentation

The function reference can be found in the docstrings and at the gsl-reference.

Written documentation can be found in the doc/ref directory.

Support

Support requests and all other questions should be submitted as a GitHub Issue.

Developement

You can browse our git repository.

If you want to contribute to PyGSL, please fork the repository and create a pull request.

The script tools/extract_tool.py generates most of the special function code.

History

A GSL interface for Python was needed for a project at Center for applied informatics Cologne.

pygsl-0.0.3 was released on May 23, 2001.

Thanks

Charl Linssen for continous integration
Jochen Küpper for pygsl.statistics
Fabian Jakobs for pygsl.blas, pygsl.eigen, pygsl.linalg and pygsl.permutation
Leonardo Milano for rpm build support and test
Eric Gurrola and Peter Stoltz for testing and supporting the port of pygsl to the MAC
Sebastien Maret for supporting the Fink http://fink.sourceforge.net port of pygsl.
Michael Forbes for Series Acceleration
and all for support by providing feed back on testing or showing by email that the code is useful for them

Maintainers

PyGSL is currently maintained by Achim Gaedke, Pierre Schnizer and Charl Linssen.

jamesjer/pygsl