Aside: Developing Applications Using Python Packages on IBM Power

Janani Janakiraman posted Developing Applications Using Python Packages on IBM Power

Are you an independent software vendor (ISV) or a customer looking to develop Python applications on the IBM Power platform? Then this blog is for you! It walks you through examples of using IBM’s Open Source Edge (OSE) and optimized, prebuilt Python wheels to accelerate development on IBM Power.

IBM Power-optimized Python wheels are available via a DevPi repository, offering performance and compatibility benefits for AI/ML workloads. For best results, use Python versions 3.10–3.12 and set up a virtual environment with --prefer-binary and --extra-index-url to install packages from the IBM wheel repository.

The OSE tool helps evaluate package availability and encourages community contributions to build scripts. Practical workflows are available in the pyeco GitHub repository, and troubleshooting tips for native libraries like libopenblas.so and libgfortran.so are included. Pinning package versions in requirements.txt ensures reproducibility and stability across environments.

Community feedback is welcome—suggest packages, report issues, or contribute via GitHub to help grow the ecosystem!

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