I don’t know much about convex optimization problems, but being a hands on person I like to have everything ready to experiment. My final goal is to run some scripts on Azure Databricks. So I’m still ony my journey to become Azure Solutions Architect. 😉
Installation
First things first: to get started I had to install Python and all required libraries. This was not super straight forward on Windows and it took me longer than expected. The main problem was, that I needed to install some additional software (some Visual Studio stuff).
Python
I used to use Anaconda to manage my Python environments. But I didn’t have it ready on this machine. So when typing python in the commandline of Windows 10, it basically directed me to the the Microsoft Store.
So, the installation of Python was pretty straight forward and I was able to verify the installation in a new command line window.
CVXPY
The manual says: pip install cvxpy.
But of course it didn’t work. 😉 But reading the error message carefully revealed that I had to install some additional software: error: Microsoft Visual C++ 14.0 or greater is required. Get it with “Microsoft C++ Build Tools”: https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/visual-cpp-build-tools/
It took me two attempts as I was not reading it carefully enough and I missed to install the correct pieces. But following the link in the error and firing up the installer is actually simple and didn’t confront me with any issues. After a restart of my machine I was finally able to install CVXPY without errors.
Verification
Having all dependencies installed I used one of the samples to verify my installation. I used least-squares problem.
And it worked just fine!
Conclusion
It was not a big deal, but it took me some time. Specifically setting Python up and installing the missing Visual Studio dependencies. I’m by no Python expert, I don’t use it everyday and getting back to this beautiful programming language with its rich set of powerful, yet simple to use libraries is always nice.