Installing Salstat on OSX

This article tells you how to install the source code version of Salstat on Apple's OS X.

Quick instructions

I recently tried this out when my Macbook Air had its hard disk replaced.

OS X comes with Python already installed. Most people will say that it's better to install another one (see http://www.python.org/download) but I managed fine installing on Yosemite. If you do choose one, make sure it's a version 2.x and not 3.x. That's because wxPython doesn't at the time of writing play well with Python 3.x.

Then, install these:

wxPython (version 2.9 or 3.x or higher - version 2.8 or lower will not work)
Numpy
Scipy
requests
BeautifulSoup
xlrd and xlwt *
ezodf *
sas7bdat *

* These are less common libraries but should be available from Setuptools (easy_install) or pip.

Once installed, download Salstat from SourceForge (stable version) Github (latest version) and run

python salstat.py

Full instructions

1. Install Setuptools

Setuptools really helps in downloading and installing a lot of the above software.

For MacOS X, open a terminal and type:

curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/ez_setup.py -o - | python

2. Install Pip

Pip is another part of installing software and it's a good idea to install it.

Download get-pip.py and open a command line window where you downloaded it and type:

python get-pip.py

3. Install wxPython

wxPython is a Python library that runs the interface. You must install version 3.0 or later. Version 2.8 just will not run.

Download wxPython and run the file by double-clicking on it.

4. Install Numpy

Numpy handles a lot of the maths that Salstat needs to do.

Download Numpy and double-click on the file to install it.

5. Install SciPy

SciPy handles more calculations. Download SciPy and double click on the file to install.

6. Install all the rest

Type all the below into a command line window to install the rest.

easy_install requests
easy_install beautifulsoup
easy_install xlrd
easy_install xlwt
easy_install ezodf
easy_install sas7bdat


The Requests library helps Salstat download data tables from web pages; BeautifulSoup helps to parse HTML pages and tables; xlrd and xlwt help to read Excel spreadsheets and ezodf helps with Libre Office spreadsheets; and sas7bdat helps to read SAS files.

7. Install Salstat

This is the actual program code. I'd probably recommend trying the GitHub version because it probably does run but is more likely to have newer stuff.

Salstat (stable version from SourceForge) Salstat (latest version from GitHub. Likely to be better but more likely to also have errors somewhere)

When it's downloaded, unzip it somewhere and open a command line window at the same folder and type:

python salstat.py

Salstat should now run. If it does not, come to the Salstat GitHub site and open a new issue to we can help you try to figure it out.