gtsam/python/README.md

Python Wrapper and Packaging
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# Deprecation Notice

We are in the process of deprecating the old Python bindings and Cython bindings in favor of the new Pybind11 binding system.

As such, the examples in this directory are no longer guaranteed to work. Please refer to the [cython examples](https://bitbucket.org/gtborg/gtsam/src/develop/cython/gtsam/examples).

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This directory contains the basic setup script and directory structure for the gtsam python module.
During the build of gtsam, when GTSAM_BUILD_PYTHON is enabled, the following instructions will run.

* The handwritten module source files are compiled and linked with Boost Python, generating a shared 
  library which can then be imported by python
* A setup.py script is configured from setup.py.in
* The gtsam packages 'gtsam', 'gtsam_utils', 'gtsam_examples', and 'gtsam_tests' are installed into
  the site-packages folder within the (possibly non-default) installation prefix folder. If 
  installing to a non-standard prefix, make sure that _prefix_/lib/pythonX.Y/site-packages is 
  present in your $PYTHONPATH

The target version of Python to create the module can be set by defining GTSAM_PYTHON_VERSION to 'X.Y' (Example: 2.7 or 3.4), or 'Default' if you want to use the default python installed in your system. Note that if you specify a target version of python, you should also have the correspondening Boost 
Python version installed (Example: libboost_python-py27.so or libboost_python-py34.so on Linux). 
If you're using the default version, your default Boost Python library (Example: libboost_python.so on Linux) should correspond to the default python version in your system.