I have set my default python and ipython to my homebrew version. (don't think this did much) I reinstalled firedrake and found the following: -> on ubuntu firedrake, petsc4py, mpi4py are all located in "firedrake/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages". On my mac the local folder does not exist. -> I see that these are all located in the following, which is not in my path. firedrake/lib/python2.7/site-packages/petsc4py When I open python and append to my path sys.path.append("/Users/fpoulin/software/firedrake/lib/python2.7/site-packages") then I can import petsc4py, mpi4py, but firedrake cannot be imported because of h5py. I am going to redo this now including all the options in PETSC and wonder if that will fix this problem.

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import firedrake Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module> File "/Users/fpoulin/software/firedrake/lib/python2.7/site-packages/firedrake/__init__.py", line 33, in <module> from firedrake.checkpointing import * File "/Users/fpoulin/software/firedrake/lib/python2.7/site-packages/firedrake/checkpointing.py", line 4, in <module> from firedrake import hdf5interface as h5i File "firedrake/hdf5interface.pyx", line 1, in init firedrake.hdf5interface (firedrake/hdf5interface.c:2016) ImportError: No module named h5py

But it seems to me that maybe there is a problem with the paths set up on my mac, and maybe other macs as well?