I tried to install basemap within Datalab using pip:
%bash
pip install basemap
and got the error:
Downloading/unpacking basemap
Could not find any downloads that satisfy the requirement basemap
Cleaning up... No distributions at all found for basemap
Storing debug log for failure in /root/.pip/pip.log
How do I install extra packages on Datalab if they are not supported by pip?
Use apt-get install. In a cell of your notebook:
%bash
apt-get -y update
apt-get -y install python-mpltoolkits.basemap
Then, remember to restart your kernel (by Reset Session)
Use the following code for this:
%%bash
pip install package_name
You might need to first do
apt-get update
So it gets the updated list of packages.
The command suggested by Lak might have worked in the past but it's no longer the case: as of today (Aug 2017) Google Datalab instances reject the command listed here
%bash
echo 'Y' | apt-get install python-mpltoolkits.basemap
outputs the error message:
E: Unable to locate package python-mpltoolkits.basemap E: Couldn't find any package by regex 'python-mpltoolkits.basemap'
Execution from the shell (vs. notebook) outputs the same error.
After searching various sources I found a fix that worked for me: from the notebook in Datalab I added an update cmd before the actual install, like this:
%bash
echo 'Y' | apt-get update
echo 'Y' | apt-get install python-mpltoolkits.basemap
Basemap doesn't come with the google datalab out of the box.
Note: I use shorthand '!' to indicate a bash command, rather than '%bash' as the google documents usually do.
As of Feb 2019, this works on a fresh google datalab:
Step 1: Install Pre-requisites
!apt-get update && apt-get install -y --allow-unauthenticated build-essential libgeos-3.5.0 libgeos-c1v5 libgeos++-dev
!pip install pyproj pyshp
Step 2: Install the whole package
!pip install https://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/matplotlib/matplotlib-toolkits/basemap-1.0.7/basemap-1.0.7.tar.gzStep 3: Check the package has been installed correctly
!pip freezeStep 4: Import the module
from mpl_toolkits.basemap import Basemap@Lak: You will need to update page 155 of your book - Data Science on the Google Cloud platform as the instructions there won't work; basemap is one of the more difficult packages to get working.
