notes on installing Python Annoy (Approximate Nearest Neighbors)

Notes on installing Annoy, which is a clustering module written in C++ with Python bindings.

python setup.py install

The first error is a sign that boost cannot be found. I installed from source.

Still can't find boost? The default location for boost in /usr/local so we'll need to tell the setup.py file to look there. Add this line to setup.py:

      include_dirs=['/usr/local/include'],

This tells distutils to pass the  -I/usr/local/include flag when compiling the annoylib library, so the compiler can find the boost directory.