[Gatsky]

Ok that's good to know. Sure, R breaks inexplicably sometimes due to dependencies, no doubt about that.

virtualenv sounds useful. Is it used much when python code is published in a paper?

About HDF5: I was just making the point that the Pandas docs recommend I install Anaconda to get Pandas, thus also installing HDF5. I am sure there are other ways, but the way the documentation is phrased suggests that these other ways are overly difficult.