Essentia: Python3 bindings

[lajash]

No support for Python3.

[dbogdanov]

No plans for adding it in the closest future, but we will do it later at some point.

[lajash]

OK thanks.

[tcwalther]

Any updates on this? Essentia is the last package in my stack that doesn't support Python 3.

[dbogdanov]

We'll be working on that soon.

[alastair]

http://python3porting.com/cextensions.html

[sastani]

Is this still the case?

[gaspaio]

No, as far as I can see (build aborted as stated in #506).
Most data science, math, etc libs are now compatible with python 3. It's a real shame that we have to revert to python 2 to use essentia via the bindings.

I am aware that it takes work, and I'm incredibly appreciative of what you've done so far :-).
On a best guess basis, when are you planning to update the python bindings ?

[alastair]

Essentia uses no helper tools to build its python bindings. As a result, we have a lot of custom code written by a developer who is no longer at MTG. I've had a look at doing the porting, but the job is large (the above link gives an idea of the amount of work involved, and we'll have to support both python 2 and 3 for some time into the future). We're only a few developers with other responsibilities as well.
Believe me, we all want python 3 support too, and it's on our list to support as soon as possible, but we probably can't give a more concrete timeframe than "as soon as we can"

[ech2]

Hej @dbogdanov,

I’ve noticed some recent commits related to the Python 3 bindings. Could you please tell, what’s the status of this feature? Can I already try to compile the master branch to get these bindings?

Thanks!

[dbogdanov]

@ech2 Python3 bindings are already in the master branch, you can start using them.

There are few fixes still going on in the python3-fixes branch to be merged later. Those fixes are related to refactoring all python examples code and fixing unit tests for Python 3.

[louis49]

Is the option "--python=/usr/local/bin/python3" enough to install in python 3? (keeping python 2 essentia version)

[dbogdanov]

Correct, this should work

[ech2]

Hi again!
I was able to compile and install it on the Arch-based distro (Manjaro), although with some problems. Particularly, I needed the following patch to apply to the wscript:

diff --git a/wscript b/wscript
index fb43390a..c71b4969 100644
--- a/wscript
+++ b/wscript
@@ -281,8 +281,8 @@ def build(ctx):

     if ctx.env.WITH_CPPTESTS:
         # missing -lpthread flag on Ubuntu and LinuxMint
-        if platform.dist()[0].lower() in ['debian', 'ubuntu', 'linuxmint'] and not ctx.env.CROSS_COMPILE_MINGW32 and not ctx.env.WITH_STATIC_EXAMPLES:
-            ext_paths = ['/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu', '/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu']
+        if not ctx.env.CROSS_COMPILE_MINGW32 and not ctx.env.WITH_STATIC_EXAMPLES:
+            ext_paths = ['/usr/lib32', '/usr/lib']
             ctx.read_shlib('pthread', paths=ext_paths)
             ctx.env.USES += ' pthread'

Aparently on Arch platform.dist() returns an empty tuple:

In [1]: import platform; platform.dist()
Out[1]: ('', '', '')

[ech2]

And I’ve uploaded a build script to install on Arch: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/essentia-git/

[dbogdanov]

@ech2 Does platform.linux_distribution() return an empty tuple too?

[ech2]

@dbogdanov Nope, works fine:

In [3]: platform.linux_distribution()
Out[3]: ('arch', 'Manjaro', 'Linux')

[dbogdanov]

Both platform.dist() and platform.linux_distribution() are depricated and are expected to be removed in Python 3.7. We'll have to use the distro PyPI package if we want to continue to use them.

[dbogdanov]

@ech2 After 6bdfc204b096072b3aabd1937497c9ed0bba2b5f, it should work now without a fix.

[ykhorzon]

Hi
I read previous discussion in this thread. I guess that installing with python3 binding is supported.
But when configure for compiling, it turns out "essentia does not support python3 yet"

The results of failed configuration:

I had followed the instructions Installing dependencies on Mac OS X and compiling-essentia

I also try out "--python=" pointing to my python path in virtual environment

My Environment

• Use essentia 2.1 beta4 release
• MacOS 10.12
• Python 3.6.2 in virtualenv which is created by pipenv
• Use pyenv for python version management

Do anyone know what is this problem and how to solve it?

[sildeag]

Not sure what MTG will say but I installed and configure waf as per instructions except I used python3. I then copied waf to the essentia folder. When you build using python3 waf it creates and uses a different hidden folder with all your waflib options. I believe MTG's only issue, besides user testing, with my fork is that my waf is different from theirs.

[ykhorzon]

@sildeag Thank you, I will try out your suggestions.
But first thing is that I need to understand what's inside ./waf. I should do some research on related issues.

Python2 will not be maintained until 2020. This will make Essentia python3 binding compiling issue become unavoidable task in near future.

[alastair]

@ykhorzon the v2.1_beta4 release does not have support for python 3. Please use master.

[ykhorzon]

Thank you! It works!

[loretoparisi]

+1 to move everything to Python3!!!

[ykhorzon]

You can use Essentia docker image. It has python 3.5 binding version.
https://github.com/MTG/essentia-docker