2.4 Install Packages from Source

To install packages from source, we of course need to get the source code first. A lot open source code nowadays are hosted on github. Therefore, we need to make sure the code can be git clone from github repositories. In our course DIY Linux, we elaborate how to use github in detail. Here, we won't talk about it, but the Github Help on Adding a new SSH key to your GitHub account is strongly recommended for students to follow.

2.4.1 Some C/C++ Packages

Actually, the author's most often used packages are:

• Video Streaming: FFmpeg, live555, VLC, gstreamer, etc.

• Computer Vision: OpenCV, PCL, OpenNI, NiTE, etc.

• Image Processing: CImg, ImageJ, ImageMagick, etc.

• GIS: OSGeo, GRASS, etc.

• Robotics: Mrpt, Orocos, etc.

2.4.2 Some Python Packages

Anaconda Python Virtual Environment is strongly recommended as the Python working environment. In fact, we've got a course Anaconda Python focusing on Python language programming under Anaconda virtual environment. Here in this course, we ignore Anaconda Python but ONLY work without a virtual environment.

To install a python package, in general, there are 3 ways:

• install the package directly from Synaptic Package Manager

• install the package by pip install.

  Pip is used to support the use of Python in cloud web hosting, such as by Heroku.(Cited from [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pip_(package_manager)) )

  • pip install packagename

  • pip install git+git://github.com/xxxxx/packagename.git

• install the package from source. From within the source directory, run command line python setup.py install.