Setting up mpmath

Download and installation

Installer
The mpmath setup files can be downloaded from the Python Package Index. Download the source
package (available as both .zip and .tar.gz), extract it, open the extracted directory, and run

python setup.py install

Using pip
Releases are registered on PyPI, so you can install latest release of the Mpmath with pip

pip install mpmath

or some specific version with

pip install mpmath==0.19

Using setuptools
If you have setuptools installed, you can download and install mpmath in one step by running:

easy_install mpmath

or

python -m easy_install mpmath

If you have an old version of mpmath installed already, you may have to pass easy_install the -U
flag to force an upgrade.

Debian/Ubuntu
Debian and Ubuntu users can install mpmath with

sudo apt-get install python-mpmath

See debian and ubuntu package information; please verify that you are getting the latest version.

OpenSUSE
Mpmath is provided in the “Science” repository for all recent versions of openSUSE. To add this
repository to the YAST software management tool, see
http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Add_package_repositories

Look up http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/science/ for a list of supported OpenSUSE

versions and use http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/science/openSUSE_11.1/ (or
accordingly for your OpenSUSE version) as the repository URL for YAST.
Current development version
The git repository is https://github.com/fredrik-johansson/mpmath

Checking that it works

After the setup has completed, you should be able to fire up the interactive Python interpreter and
do the following:

>>> from mpmath import *

>>> mp.dps = 50
>>> print(mpf(2) ** mpf('0.5'))
1.4142135623730950488016887242096980785696718753769
>>> print(2*pi)
6.2831853071795864769252867665590057683943387987502

Note: if you have are upgrading mpmath from an earlier version, you may have to manually
uninstall the old version or remove the old files.

Using gmpy (optional)

By default, mpmath uses Python integers internally. If gmpy version 1.03 or later is installed on
your system, mpmath will automatically detect it and transparently use gmpy integers intead. This
makes mpmath much faster, especially at high precision (approximately above 100 digits).

To verify that mpmath uses gmpy, check the internal variable BACKEND is not equal to ‘python’:

>>> import mpmath.libmp

>>> mpmath.libmp.BACKEND
'gmpy'

The gmpy mode can be disabled by setting the MPMATH_NOGMPY environment variable. Note
that the mode cannot be switched during runtime; mpmath must be re-imported for this change to
take effect.

Running tests
It is recommended that you run mpmath’s full set of unit tests to make sure everything works. The
tests are located in the tests subdirectory of the main mpmath directory. They can be run in the
interactive interpreter using the runtests() function:

import mpmath
mpmath.runtests()

Alternatively, they can be run from the tests directory via

python runtests.py

The tests should finish in about a minute. If you have psyco installed, the tests can also be run with

python runtests.py -psyco

which will cut the running time in half.

If any test fails, please send a detailed bug report to the mpmath issue tracker. The tests can also
be run with py.test. This will sometimes generate more useful information in case of a failure.

To run the tests with support for gmpy disabled, use

python runtests.py -nogmpy

To enable extra diagnostics, use

python runtests.py -strict

Compiling the documentation

If you downloaded the source package, the text source for these documentation pages is included
in the doc directory. The documentation can be compiled to pretty HTML using Sphinx. Go to the
doc directory and run

python build.py

You can also test that all the interactive examples in the documentation work by running

python run_doctest.py

and by running the individual .py files in the mpmath source.

(The doctests may take several minutes.)

Finally, some additional demo scripts are available in the demo directory included in the source
package.

Mpmath under Sage

Mpmath is a standard package in Sage, in version 4.1 or later of Sage. Mpmath is preinstalled a
regular Python module, and can be imported as usual within Sage:

----------------------------------------------------------------------
| Sage Version 4.1, Release Date: 2009-07-09 |
| Type notebook() for the GUI, and license() for information. |
----------------------------------------------------------------------
sage: import mpmath
sage: mpmath.mp.dps = 50
sage: print mpmath.mpf(2) ** 0.5
1.4142135623730950488016887242096980785696718753769

The mpmath installation under Sage automatically use Sage integers for asymptotically fast
arithmetic, so there is no need to install GMPY:

sage: mpmath.libmp.BACKEND
'sage'

In Sage, mpmath can alternatively be imported via the interface library sage.libs.mpmath.all . For
example:

sage: import sage.libs.mpmath.all as mpmath

This module provides a few extra conversion functions, including call() which permits calling any
mpmath function with Sage numbers as input, and getting Sage RealNumber or ComplexNumber
instances with the appropriate precision back:

sage: w = mpmath.call(mpmath.erf, 2+3*I, prec=100)

sage: w
-20.829461427614568389103088452 + 8.6873182714701631444280787545*I
sage: type(w)
<type 'sage.rings.complex_number.ComplexNumber'>
sage: w.prec()
100

See the help for sage.libs.mpmath.all for further information.