TOPIC: WING IDE
PandasGUI: A simple solution for Pandas DataFrame inspection from within VSCode
2nd September 2025One of the things that I miss about Spyder when running Python scripts is the ability to look at DataFrames easily. Recently, I was checking a VAT return only for tmux to truncate how much of the DataFrame I could see in output from the print function. While closing tmux might have been an idea, I sought the DataFrame windowing alternative. That led me to the pandasgui package, which did exactly what I needed, apart from pausing the script execution to show me the data. The installed was done using pip:
pip install pandasgui
Once that competed, I could use the following code construct to accomplish what I wanted:
import pandasgui
pandasgui.show(df)
In my case, there were several lines between the two lines above. Nevertheless, the first line made the pandasgui package available to the script, while the second one displayed the DataFrame in a GUI with scrollbars and cells, among other things. That was close enough to what I wanted to leave me able to complete the task that was needed of me.
Fixing Python path issues after Homebrew updates on Linux Mint
30th August 2025With Python available by default, it is worth asking how the version on my main Linux workstation is made available courtesy of Homebrew. All that I suggest is that it either was needed by something else or I fancied having a newer version that was available through the Linux Mint repos. Regardless of the now vague reason for doing so, it meant that I had some work to do after running the following command to update and upgrade all my Homebrew packages:
brew update; brew upgrade
The first result was this message when I tried running a Python script afterwards:
-bash: /home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/bin/python3: No such file or directory
The solution was to issue the following command to re-link Python:
brew link --overwrite python@3.13
Since you may have a different version by the time that you read this, just change 3.13 above to whatever you have on your system. All was not quite sorted for me after that, though.
My next task was to make Pylance look in the right place for Python packages because they had been moved too. Initial inquiries were suggesting complex if robust solutions. Instead, I went for a simpler fix. The first step was to navigate to File > Preferences > Settings in the menus. Then, I sought out the Open Settings (JSON) icon in the top right of the interface and clicked on it to open a JSON containing VSCode settings. Once in there, I edited the file to end up with something like this:
"python.analysis.extraPaths": [
"/home/[account name]/.local/bin",
"/home/[account name]/.local/lib/python[python version]/site-packages"
]Clearly, your [account name] and [python version] need to be filled in above. That approach works for me so far, leaving the more complex alternative for later should I come to need that.
What to do an error appears when using pip to install Python packages on Linux Mint 22
16th December 2024After upgrading to Linux Mint 22, the following message appeared when attempting to install Python packages using the pip command:
error: externally-managed-environment
× This environment is externally managed
╰─> To install Python packages system-wide, try apt install
python3-xyz, where xyz is the package you are trying to
install.
If you wish to install a non-Debian-packaged Python package,
create a virtual environment using python3 -m venv path/to/venv.
Then use path/to/venv/bin/python and path/to/venv/bin/pip. Make
sure you have python3-full installed.
If you wish to install a non-Debian packaged Python application,
it may be easiest to use pipx install xyz, which will manage a
virtual environment for you. Make sure you have pipx installed.
See /usr/share/doc/python3.12/README.venv for more information.
note: If you believe this is a mistake, please contact your Python installation or OS distribution provider. You can override this, at the risk of breaking your Python installation or OS, by passing --break-system-packages.
hint: See PEP 668 for the detailed specification.
This will frustrate anyone following how-tos on the web, so users will need to know about it. On something like Linux Mint, the repositories may not be as up-to-date as PyPI, so picking up the very latest version has its advantages. Thus, I initially used the unrecommended --break-system-packages switch to get things going as before, since doing never broke anything before. While the way of working feels like an overkill in some ways, using pipx probably is the way forward as long as things work as I want them to do.
There is wisdom in using virtual environments too, especially when AI models are involved. For most of what I get to do, that may be getting too elaborate. Then, deleting or renaming the message file in /usr/lib/python3.12/EXTERNALLY-MANAGED is tempting if that gets around things, as retrograde as that probably is. After all, I never broke anything before this message started to appear, possibly since my interests are data related.
AttributeError: module 'PIL' has no attribute 'Image'
11th March 2024One of my websites has an online photo gallery. This has been a long-term activity that has taken several forms over the years. Once HTML and JavaScript based, it then was powered by Perl before PHP and MySQL came along to take things from there.
While that remains how it works, the publishing side of things has used its own selection of mechanisms over the same time span. Perl and XML were the backbone until Python and Markdown took over. There was a time when ImageMagick and GraphicsMagick handled image processing, but Python now does that as well.
That was when the error message gracing the title of this post came to my notice. Everything was working well when executed in Spyder, but the message appears when I tried running things using Python on the command line. PIL is the abbreviated name for the Python 3 pillow package; there was one called PIL in the Python 2 days.
For me, pillow loads, resizes and creates new images, which is handy for adding borders and copyright/source information to each image as well as creating thumbnails. All this happens in memory and that makes everything go quickly, much faster than disk-based tools like ImageMagick and GraphicsMagick.
Of course, nothing is going to happen if the package cannot be loaded, and that is what the error message is about. Linux is what I mainly use, so that is the context for this scenario. What I was doing was something like the following in the Python script:
import PIL
Then, I referred to PIL.Image when I needed it, and this could not be found when the script was run from the command line (BASH). The solution was to add something like the following:
from PIL import Image
That sorted it, and I must have run into trouble with PIL.ImageFilter too, since I now load it in the same manner. In both cases, I could just refer to Image or ImageFilter as I required and without the dot syntax. However, you need to make sure that there is no clash with anything in another loaded Python package when doing this.
Another way to supply the terminal output of one BASH command to another
26th April 2023My usual way for sending the output of one command to another is to be place one command after another, separated by the pipe (|) operator, adjusting the second command as needed. However, I recently found that this approach does not work well for docker pull commands until I uncovered another option.
The solution is to enclose the input command in $( ) within the output command. Within the parentheses, any kind of command can be declared and includes anything with piping as part of it. As long as text is being printed to the terminal, it can be fed to the second command and used as required. Thus, you can have something like the following:
docker pull $([command outputting name of image to download])
This approach has helped with other kinds of automation of docker image and container use and deployment because it is so general. There may be other uses found for the approach yet.
Building a sitemap in XML
24th November 2022While there are many tools that will build XML site maps, there is some satisfaction to be had in creating your own. This is despite there being a multitude of search engine optimisation plugins for content management systems like WordPress or what is built into static site generators like Hugo. Sometimes, building your own allows for added simplicity, and that is shared with recent efforts in WordPress theme development.
The sitemap XML protocol is simple enough to offer a short coding project. The basis was what Hugo generates, and I used Python to create the XML files. The only libraries that I needed were configparser, SQLAlchemy and pandas. The first two of these allowed databases to be queried, and the last on the list was used for data processing. Otherwise, it was a case of using what is built into the Python language, like file writing and looping.
Once the scripts were ready, they could be uploaded to web servers and executed by scheduled jobs using CRON to keep things up to date. Along the way, I also uncovered a way to publicise the locations of the sitemap files to search engine bots using robots.txt. The structure of the instruction is the following:
User-agent: *
Sitemap: sitemap.xml
This means that it announces to all bots the location of the sitemap file. In my case, I always included the full URL for the XML file, and that clearly varies by website location.
Resolving a clash between Homebrew and Python
22nd November 2022For reasons that I cannot recall now, I installed the Hugo static website generator on my Linux system and web servers using Homebrew. The only reason that I suggest is that it might have been a way to get the latest version at the time because Linux Mint only does major changes like that every two years, keeping it in line with long-term support editions of Ubuntu.
When Homebrew was installed, it changed the lookup path for command line executables by adding the following line to my .bashrc file:
eval "$(/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/bin/brew shellenv)"
This executed the following lines:
export HOMEBREW_PREFIX="/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew";
export HOMEBREW_CELLAR="/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/Cellar";
export HOMEBREW_REPOSITORY="/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/Homebrew";
export PATH="/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/bin:/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/sbin${PATH+:$PATH}";
export MANPATH="/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/share/man${MANPATH+:$MANPATH}:";
export INFOPATH="/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/share/info:${INFOPATH:-}";
While the result suits Homebrew, it changed the setup of Python and its packages on my system. Eventually, this had undesirable consequences, like messing up how Spyder started, so I wanted to change this. There are other things that I have automated using Python and these were not working either.
One way that I have seen suggested is to execute the following command, but I cannot vouch for this:
brew unlink python
What I did was to comment out the offending line in .bashrc and replace it with the following:
export PATH="$PATH:/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/bin:/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/sbin"
export HOMEBREW_PREFIX="/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew";
export HOMEBREW_CELLAR="/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/Cellar";
export HOMEBREW_REPOSITORY="/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/Homebrew";
export MANPATH="/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/share/man${MANPATH+:$MANPATH}:";
export INFOPATH="${INFOPATH:-}/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/share/info";
The first command adds Homebrew paths to the end of the PATH variable rather than the beginning, which was the previous arrangement. This ensures system folders are searched for executable files before Homebrew folders. It also means Python packages load from my user area instead of the Homebrew location, which happened under Homebrew's default configuration. When working with Python packages, remember not to install one version at the system level and another in your user area, as this creates conflicts.
So far, the result of the Homebrew changes is not unsatisfactory, and I will watch for any rough edges that need addressing. If something comes up, then I will set things up in another way.