The Fast Artificial Neural Network Library (FANN) is a neural network library, which implements multilayer artificial neural networks in C with support for both fully connected and sparsely connected networks. It has a Python binding that allows you to use its functionality from within Python, but with the bits that need speed implemented in C.

We are going to install the FANN library on Ubuntu and install the Python binding. Get and unzip the library:

wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/fann/fann/2.1.0beta/fann-2.1.0beta.zip
sudo apt-get install unzip
unzip fann-2.1.0beta.zip

Configure, make and install the library:

cd fann-2.1.0/
sudo apt-get install gcc make
./configure
make
sudo make install

Install the Python bindings:

cd python/
sudo apt-get install g++ python-dev swig
sudo python setup.py install

The Python files are now located in a build directory. Copy them to a place where you can use them, e.g. your home directory:

cd build/lib.linux-i686-2.6/pyfann/
cp libfann.py ~
cp _libfann.so ~

And finally test that Python can now work with the library, start up Python and type:

import libfann
print dir(libfann)

This should print out all the functions of the library.