Installing Mathics3

Here we describe the various ways to get Mathics installed.

Mathics3 (mathics-core) Requirements

The Mathics suite runs on Python 3.6 or later. We also support Pyston and PyPy 3.6 or later.

Underneath, Mathics core relies on SymPy which relies on NumPy. These and the other requirements will be installed automatically if you use the standard Python installer pip. They are also listed in setup.py.

SciPy is optional. It is used for images and provides alternative implementations for a number of builtins.

Building the PDF documentation has a number of additional dependencies.

  • xetex 3.14159265-2.6-0.999991 or greater

  • asymptote, 2.71-37 or greater

  • ghostscript Version 9.54.0 or greater

Pay close attention to the version. Some OS-provided packages have bugs in them that will prevent certain images like those involving opacity (used in Filling) not to render.

OS package dependencies

Here we will only describe OS package dependencies for Mathics3. For the front-ends, Mathics-Django or mathicsscript, see the install instructions in the specific github repositories.

Debian/Ubuntu

For Debian/Ubuntu based systems:

$ apt-get install python-dev libsqlite3-dev python-setuptools liblapack-dev llvm-dev

as super-user, i.e. either after having issued su or by preceding the command with sudo).

Note that to build the PDF, you will need asymptote and .deb package has a couple of bugs that will cause some graphs with opacity to fail. Asymptote version 2.71 or later is recommended. I build this from the git source.

Also ghostscript is needed and 9.50 has bugs in it too that will cause failures in rendering Asymptote images. Use 9.54 or later.

MacOSX

On Mac OS X:

$ brew install sqlite3
$ brew install llvm@11

Make sure when you install llvmlite to specify the LLVM_CONFIG:

$ LLVM_CONFIG=/usr/local/Cellar/llvm@11/11.1.0/bin/llvm-config pip install llvmlite

FreeBSD

On FreeBSD:

$ sudo pkg install math/py-mathics

MS Windows

On Microsoft Windows:

$ choco install llvm

Install from PyPI

If you have the appropriate OS dependant packages installed, and want to install everything in one shot, try:

$ pip install Mathics-omnibus[full]

This might work if you don’t have the full suite of support OS packages LLVM, xetex and numerous others, the above may fail.

You can try a more minimal installation using:

$ pip install Mathics-omnibus[full]

Either of these installs these suite of independent Mathics3 packages:

  • mathicsscript

  • mathics-django

  • pymathics-graph, pymathics-natlang

These in turn pull in two other Mathics3 packages:

  • mathics-scanner

  • mathics-core

In other words, this package doesn’t have any code in it. Instead it just contains dependencies to other PyPI Mathics packages.of other PyPI package. It is more or less equivalent to:

$ pip install Mathics3  # this is the core engine. It is a dependency of some of the below too
$ pip install Mathics-Django[full] # web front-end with extras
$ pip install mathicsscript[full]  # the command-line interface with extras
$ pip install pymathics-natlang # the Natural-language Python module
$ pip install pymathics-graph # the Python module for working with Graphs and Networks

If something fails, try using the above commands one by one, and remove the [full] to get a more basic installation.

Note the name “Mathics3” for the core engine. This is the most recent release. “Mathics” has pre-Python 3 code.

Other sections have descriptions of the various pieces, what features they add and what dependencies are needed to run them.

If you want mathics-core to include modules that have been run through Cython, then install Cython separately:

$ pip install cython

From docker (dockerhub)

As an alternative to building all the components from source or via Python package, you can run pre-built code for all of the components via docker. To download a copy of the docker image run:

$ docker pull mathicsorg/mathics

This will pull the latest development release that has a docker tagname #latest if you want a stable release, give the version in the pull command. For example

$ docker pull mathicsorg/mathics#4.0.0

From an OS-specific Repository

Click on the link below from Repology.org for details for a specific OS and distribution.

Packaging status

Install from git from github

If you need the most recent fixes, you can install from github. Note that there isn’t a single github repository that contains everything.

Also, since Mathics is in constant flux, dependencies can change. The development version from might require development version from another.

These instructions then aren’t complete and may need to be adapted for the various Mathics3 github repositories