Can't find find_graphviz()

Where has find_graphviz() gone? It’s needed for for the documentation examples in Keras.

Python 2.7.12 |Anaconda custom (x86_64)| (default, Jul 2 2016, 17:43:17) [GCC 4.2.1 (Based on Apple Inc. build 5658) (LLVM build 2336.11.00)] on darwin Type “help”, “copyright”, “credits” or “license” for more information. Anaconda is brought to you by Continuum Analytics. Please check out: http://continuum.io/thanks and https://anaconda.org

import pydot pydot.find_graphviz() Traceback (most recent call last): File “<stdin>”, line 1, in <module> AttributeError: ‘module’ object has no attribute ‘find_graphviz’

[johnyf]

Thanks for reporting this issue. This appears to be a bug in keras: https://github.com/fchollet/keras/blob/ff1f79603296bffc312076afa0589d229145924c/keras/utils/visualize_util.py#L13.

Firstly, that the line if not pydot.find_graphviz() is reached means that either pydot_ng or pydot was imported. That an ImportError is raised on the next line means that either pydot_ng was succesfully imported, or an older version of pydot. With the current pydot, an AttributeError would have been raised instead by the line if not ....

The ImportError message on this line: https://github.com/fchollet/keras/blob/ff1f79603296bffc312076afa0589d229145924c/keras/utils/visualize_util.py#L14 is inaccurate. By the reasoning above, some pydot variant was successfully imported. What cannot be found is GraphViz.

So, you need to install GraphViz and ensure that dot is in your $PATH. I would recommend opening a pull request to keras that:

1. updates those lines to use pydot == 1.2.3, following this comment: https://github.com/erocarrera/pydot/commit/812e3c40dac1e0225391481073c64da5bafba93e#commitcomment-18236709, which was implemented in theano
2. removes the dependence on pydot_ng
3. possibly adds pydot == 1.2.3 to the install_requires of keras (https://github.com/fchollet/keras/blob/ff1f79603296bffc312076afa0589d229145924c/setup.py#L13).

Also, pydot_ng is unmaintained (last commit in 2015), in favor of upstream (here). The comment “pydot-ng is a fork of pydot that is better maintained.” is outdated, it was introduced with https://github.com/fchollet/keras/commit/e5d3abdf09d8c281ca8817b6292a044673ba3007, so before maintenance of pydot resumed.

[johnyf]

pydotplus is an unmaintained fork of pydot.