vtkXdmfReader not working in Python on Ubuntu

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1

I am trying to use the vtkXdmfReader in Python to read a file. I was able to make this work on Windows with a pre-built Windows version of vtk without a hitch. Now I am trying this on Ubuntu and although vtk and its python bindings seem to install fine, vtkXdmfReader does not seem to install (module ‘vtk’ has no attribute ‘vtkXdmfReader’). Since the goal is to deploy in the cloud, I have a dockerfile that captures my config:

FROM ubuntu:18.04

USER root

RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y python3-pip libgl1-mesa-dev xvfb

RUN useradd -ms /bin/bash mini
WORKDIR /home/mini

USER mini

RUN pip3 install h5py vtk

ENTRYPOINT /bin/bash

Now I build and run:

$ docker built -it mini .
$ docker run -it mini
mini@cc246a3bcbe8:~$ python3
Python 3.6.9 (default, Nov  7 2019, 10:44:02) 
[GCC 8.3.0] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import vtk
>>> vtk.vtkXdmfReader
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
AttributeError: module 'vtk' has no attribute 'vtkXdmfReader'

However, it seems to be an otherwise fully functioning vtk install, e.g.:

>>> [a for a in dir(vtk) if a[:3] == 'vtk'][:25]
['vtk', 'vtk3DSImporter', 'vtk3DWidget', 'vtkAMRBaseParticlesReader', 'vtkAMRBaseReader', 'vtkAMRBox', 'vtkAMRCutPlane', 'vtkAMRDataInternals', 'vtkAMRDataSetCache', 'vtkAMREnzoParticlesReader', 'vtkAMREnzoReader', 'vtkAMRFlashParticlesReader', 'vtkAMRFlashReader', 'vtkAMRGaussianPulseSource', 'vtkAMRInformation', 'vtkAMRInterpolatedVelocityField', 'vtkAMRResampleFilter', 'vtkAMRSliceFilter', 'vtkAMRToMultiBlockFilter', 'vtkAMRUtilities', 'vtkASCIITextCodec', 'vtkAVSucdReader', 'vtkAbstractArray', 'vtkAbstractCellLinks', 'vtkAbstractCellLocator']

The wheel pip3 pulls is https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/22/f5/30e11e1ad21701e1cd185b046979107930419a74a5602c6b899dc8523fe4/vtk-8.1.2-cp36-cp36m-manylinux1_x86_64.whl. I’ve also tried a conda install with the same end result. What am I missing?

2

I did a fresh reinstall on Windows and found that pip install vtk also did not install vtkXdmfReader properly. However, conda worked fine, with this install plan:

package                    |            build
---------------------------|-----------------
conda-4.8.1                |           py37_0         2.8 MB
expat-2.2.5                |       he025d50_0          83 KB
hdf4-4.2.13                |       h712560f_2         1.3 MB
jsoncpp-1.8.4              |       h74a9793_0         355 KB
libnetcdf-4.6.1            |       h411e497_2         494 KB
vtk-8.2.0                  | py37h1e53df8_200        21.9 MB
------------------------------------------------------------
                                       Total:        27.0 MB

I will try again with conda on Ubuntu and see if that helps.