PyJulia does not work with Julia 1.0 & 0.7 with Python installed via Conda/Ubuntu/(what else?)

I’m writing down the issue so that it is easy to find by the users.

At the moment, for PyJulia to load Julia >= 0.7, two conditions have to be met:

1. Python interpreter configured for PyCall.jl and Python interpreter used to import PyJulia have to use identical libpython (once #190 is merged) <strike>have exactly identical paths</strike>.

2. The Python interpreter have to be dynamically linked (which is usually the case in Windows and macOS according to this comment)

To check if condition 2 is the case, run:

$ ldd /usr/bin/python | grep libpython
        libpython3.7m.so.1.0 => /usr/lib/libpython3.7m.so.1.0 (0x00007f17c12c4000)

where /usr/bin/python is the appropriate Python interpreter.

If it does not print anything, you can’t use PyJulia with this Python interpreter.

[ExpandingMan]

This problem is not going to go away, Debian is not going to change it and lots and lots of people are going to try this as debian distros are the most popular (though I prefer Arch I still have to use them often myself). My first question is how other languages solve this problem. We can’t be the first people ever to want to use a dynamically linked Python executable. It would be good to see how Scala and Java solve this, though I haven’t started looking yet.

I think at a minimum what we need is a very clear set of the simplest possible steps that one would take to get pyjulia running on debian in a very visible location right in the packages readme or documentation. Thanks to @tkf to taking the first steps to this with his pyenv setup, I’m going to try it myself when I get a chance.

[tkf]

I think there are three ways to use Python with Julia 1.0 on Ubuntu/Debian/etc. at the moment:

• If you just want to use your Python module, you can import it from PyCall.jl and call the functions in it. See, e.g., https://github.com/tkf/IPython.jl/blob/d5b27ac6e38f1b96ba42099da1098975cdd8b9be/src/core.jl#L31 and https://github.com/tkf/IPython.jl/blob/d5b27ac6e38f1b96ba42099da1098975cdd8b9be/src/core.jl#L20 in IPython.jl/src/core.jl.
• If you just want an interactive Python session, you can use my IPython.jl to drop into IPython through Julia REPL.
• If you want fully functional PyJulia in Python, one way to do it is though docker. Check out: https://github.com/tkf/docker-ipyjulia

Will this issue be solved in near future

I think I know how to fix it #173. But likely not in next weeks. I can’t grant anything 😃 If I were to do it I want to do it after dropping Julia 0.6 (which requires PyJulia to be released soon).