Installation

Asymmetry is not currently published on PyPI. Most users on Windows or Apple Silicon Macs should install the pre-built desktop application from the GitHub Releases page (Windows .exe installer; macOS .dmg). Intel Mac and Linux users should install from the Git repository as described below.

Requirements

Asymmetry requires Python 3.10 or later, and is fully compatible with Python 3.13.

Core dependencies

• numpy >= 1.24

• iminuit >= 2.0 (for fitting without scipy dependency)

Optional dependencies

For GUI support:

• PySide6 >= 6.5

• matplotlib >= 3.7

For HDF5 support:

• h5py >= 3.8

For HDF4 support (reading legacy ISIS muon NeXus V1 .nxs files):

• pyhdf >= 0.10

  On Linux the pyhdf wheel bundles the HDF4 C library. On macOS (Apple Silicon) the PyPI wheel does too. On Intel Macs there is no PyPI wheel — use conda-forge pyhdf or build from source. On Windows the wheel does not bundle the HDF4 runtime: pyhdf also needs hdf.dll / mfhdf.dll (e.g. from the conda-forge hdf4 package or packaging/windows/fetch_hdf4_dlls.py), with ASYMMETRY_HDF4_DLL_DIR pointed at the directory holding them. The pre-built Windows and Apple Silicon macOS desktop releases bundle HDF4; no extra setup is needed there. See Loading Data.

For ROOT file support:

• uproot >= 5.0

For GLE export support:

• gleplot installed from GitHub:

  pip install "gleplot @ git+https://github.com/BenHuddart/gleplot.git"
  

  Recent Asymmetry releases use gleplot’s foldered export support by default, so install a current git version rather than an older cached wheel.

• The GLE compiler itself (gle) needs to be on PATH for .gle scripts to be compiled to PDF or EPS at export time. Without it, the scripts and sidecar data files are still written and can be compiled later. In a frozen macOS app the inherited PATH is minimal, so Asymmetry also looks for gle in the standard Homebrew, MacPorts, and QGLE locations. Override the search from Setup → GLE Setup… in the main menu; the chosen path is persisted across sessions. On accept the dialog runs the chosen executable once to verify it is actually GLE — a path that cannot run (or is not GLE) is rejected with the reason shown in the dialog, rather than saved and left to fail at export time.

Installation methods

From a local repository checkout (recommended)

git clone https://github.com/BenHuddart/asymmetry.git
cd asymmetry

# Full end-user feature set (GUI + optional I/O/export support)
python -m pip install -c constraints.txt ".[gui,hdf5,hdf4,root,gle]"

Other options from the same checkout:

# Core library only
python -m pip install -c constraints.txt .

# GUI support only
python -m pip install -c constraints.txt ".[gui]"

# All optional dependencies, including development tools
python -m pip install -c constraints.txt ".[all]"

Install directly from GitHub with pip

# Core library
python -m pip install "git+https://github.com/BenHuddart/asymmetry.git"

# Full end-user feature set (no development extras)
python -m pip install "asymmetry[gui,hdf5,hdf4,root,gle] @ git+https://github.com/BenHuddart/asymmetry.git"

Development installation

For development work:

git clone https://github.com/BenHuddart/asymmetry.git
cd asymmetry
python -m pip install -c constraints.txt -e ".[all]"

# Run tests
python -m pytest

Verifying installation

import asymmetry
print(asymmetry.__version__)

# Test GUI availability
from asymmetry.gui.app import main
# main()  # Uncomment to launch GUI