Installation via Anaconda

Anaconda (you can also use Miniconda for a smaller footprint) is a scientific Python installation shipping with essentially all needed packages. Install it according to the instructions on their homepage. You can use any Anaconda Python version. An Anaconda Python installation is completely separate from any existing system wide or user space Python installation, so Anaconda can be tested without the fear of breaking an existing installation.

Anaconda works on most systems without root access!

Install Anaconda following the instructions on their site
Add the conda-forge channel to your Anaconda configuration:

$ conda config --add channels conda-forge

Install pre-compiled ObsPy conda package from Anaconda cloud with:

$ conda install obspy

Updating

$ conda update obspy

or (if you did not add the conda-forge channel to your default channels):

$ conda update -c conda-forge obspy

Try to stick to only using conda package manager to install packages whenever possible! Other tools like pip (or even its outdated easy_install predecessor) should really only be used for Python packages that are not packaged by Anaconda (search for available pre-packaged versions first doing conda search <package_name> -- or if it's not available in the default channel doing anaconda search -t conda <package_name>). And even when needing to install a package from source using pip it is a good idea to at least install the package's dependencies via conda beforehand.

Troubleshooting:

Windows users might have to add conda-forge channel to have basemap packages available (see ContinuumIO/anaconda-issues#757)
If you have problems, be sure to check out the Troubleshooting page of Anaconda
Especially beware of mixing in Python packages from outside the environment, not handled/installed by the conda package manager. This is usually unwanted and coming from older (and way more sloppy) Python installations and bound to bring forth very unexpected and hard to debug behavior and errors. This can happen outside of anaconda's control by..
- having PYTHONPATH and PYTHONHOME environment variables set, or (less common) by..
- having Python modules in specific user space locations which Python looks for

Tip:

Versions of packages can be fixed by pinning in Anaconda (e.g. so that certain packages stay on same version even when updating packages that depend on them). It can be a good idea to pin the installed numpy version as many packages are compiled against a certain numpy version and only update numpy deliberately. Also, ObsPy major version can be fixed in the same way to keep an Anaconda environment on the a fixed version, e.g.:

(Note: Recent conda version >=4.0 has significant improvements and properly takes numpy dependent packages into account when trying to update numpy, so pinning numpy is not as important anymore with an updated conda package)

numpy 1.10.*
matplotlib 1.5.*
basemap 1.0.*
obspy 1.0.*

Example:

This example shows how to set up a separate anaconda environment (after anaconda installation) for the old ObsPy version 0.10.2 (assuming a Python2 installation):

add our obspy Anaconda channel (only needs to be done once after Anaconda installation)

$ conda config --add channels obspy

create separate, bare environment with name "obspy0.10"

$ conda create -n obspy0.10 python=2.7
Fetching package metadata: ........
Solving package specifications: ...........

Package plan for installation in environment /home/megies/anaconda/envs/obspy0.10:

The following NEW packages will be INSTALLED:

    openssl:    1.0.2g-0     
    pip:        8.1.1-py27_0 
    python:     2.7.11-0     
    readline:   6.2-2        
    setuptools: 20.3-py27_0  
    sqlite:     3.9.2-0      
    tk:         8.5.18-0     
    wheel:      0.29.0-py27_0
    zlib:       1.2.8-0      

Proceed ([y]/n)? y

Extracting packages ...
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Linking packages ...
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#
# To activate this environment, use:
# $ source activate obspy0.10
#
# To deactivate this environment, use:
# $ source deactivate
#

activate environment for use in this terminal

$ source activate obspy0.10
discarding /path/to/anaconda/bin from PATH
prepending /path/to/anaconda/envs/obspy0.10/bin to PATH
(obspy0.10)$ which python  # just to illustrate which python is in use now
/path/to/anaconda/envs/obspy0.10/bin/python

set desired version numbers by pinning in environment (create new text file "pinned" in correct folder, see above)

# contents of /path/to/anaconda/envs/obspy0.10/conda-meta/pinned:
python 2.7.*
numpy 1.10.*
matplotlib 1.5.*
basemap 1.0.*
obspy 0.10.*

now install obspy and dependencies

(obspy0.10)$ conda install obspy
Fetching package metadata: ........
Solving package specifications: ...........

Package plan for installation in environment /home/megies/anaconda/envs/obspy0.10:

The following packages will be downloaded:

    package                    |            build
    ---------------------------|-----------------
    libgfortran-3.0            |                0         261 KB
    future-0.15.2              |           py27_0         616 KB
    numpy-1.9.3                |           py27_2         5.7 MB
    pytz-2016.2                |           py27_0         176 KB
    lxml-3.6.0                 |           py27_0         2.8 MB
    python-dateutil-2.5.1      |           py27_0         235 KB
    scipy-0.17.0               |       np19py27_2        29.9 MB
    ------------------------------------------------------------
                                           Total:        39.7 MB

The following NEW packages will be INSTALLED:

    basemap:         1.0.7-np19py27_0 
    cairo:           1.12.18-6        
    flake8:          2.5.1-py27_0     
    fontconfig:      2.11.1-5         
    freetype:        2.5.5-0          
    funcsigs:        0.4-py27_0       
    future:          0.15.2-py27_0    
    geos:            3.3.3-0          
    libgfortran:     3.0-0            
    libpng:          1.6.17-0         
    libxml2:         2.9.2-0          
    libxslt:         1.1.28-0         
    lxml:            3.6.0-py27_0     
    matplotlib:      1.4.3-np19py27_2 
    mccabe:          0.3.1-py27_0     
    mkl:             11.3.1-0         
    mock:            1.3.0-py27_0     
    numpy:           1.9.3-py27_2     
    obspy:           0.10.2-np19py27_0
    pbr:             1.3.0-py27_0     
    pep8:            1.7.0-py27_0     
    pixman:          0.32.6-0         
    py2cairo:        1.10.0-py27_2    
    pyflakes:        1.1.0-py27_0     
    pyparsing:       2.0.3-py27_0     
    pyqt:            4.11.4-py27_1    
    python-dateutil: 2.5.1-py27_0     
    pytz:            2016.2-py27_0    
    qt:              4.8.7-1          
    scipy:           0.17.0-np19py27_2
    sip:             4.16.9-py27_0    
    six:             1.10.0-py27_0    
    sqlalchemy:      1.0.12-py27_0    

Proceed ([y]/n)? 

Fetching packages ...
libgfortran-3. 100% |######################################| Time: 0:00:00 442.02 kB/s
future-0.15.2- 100% |######################################| Time: 0:00:00 756.18 kB/s
numpy-1.9.3-py 100% |######################################| Time: 0:00:04   1.40 MB/s
pytz-2016.2-py 100% |######################################| Time: 0:00:00 356.89 kB/s
lxml-3.6.0-py2 100% |######################################| Time: 0:00:03 793.42 kB/s
python-dateuti 100% |######################################| Time: 0:00:00 473.91 kB/s
scipy-0.17.0-n 100% |######################################| Time: 0:00:20   1.54 MB/s
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