Google Colab ROOT import

ROOT
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1

Hi all,

I’m trying to set up ROOT in a Google Colab environment, by installing a pre-compiled binary distribution.

First, I’m finding the system information by running !lsb_release -a, which returns the following:

No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 20.04.5 LTS
Release: 20.04
Codename: focal

Then, I install and unpack the appropriate pre-compiled distribution:

!wget https://root.cern/download/root_v6.28.02.Linux-ubuntu20-x86_64-gcc9.4.tar.gz
!tar -xzvf /content/root_v6.28.02.Linux-ubuntu20-x86_64-gcc9.4.tar.gz
!source /content/root/bin/thisroot.sh

But when I run a cell with import ROOT, I get a module not found error. I’m not sure why this is happening as I thought I could just set up ROOT as I would on an Ubuntu system. Any help or advice would be appreciated!

ROOT Version: 6.28.02
Platform: Google Colab
Compiler: Not Provided

2

Hi,
I think the correct environment is not passed to the cell, after calling !source /content/root/bin/thisroot.sh.
There should be a different way to set the correct environment variables to importing ROOT in the collar notebook cell.

Lorenzo

3

As shown in this old post on stackoverflow (see answer 2 in Installing CERN ROOT on google Jupyter Notebook - Stack Overflow )

You should do this to set the correct PATH

import sys
sys.path.append("/content/root/lib")

However, it will still not work, because ROOT has been built with Python 3.8 and Colab uses Python 3.9. I don’t know if you can use Python3.9 in Colab. Otherwise the only solution would be to download the ROOT sources and compile it

Lorenzo