title: Installing Python wrapper for METIS: Cannot locate METIS_DLL shared library
body: <p>I am planning to use Metis for drawing some networks and graphs using Python. I downloaded Metis from <a href="http://glaros.dtc.umn.edu/gkhome/metis/metis/download" rel="nofollow">here</a>. For installing the Python wrapper, I followed the instructions given <a href="http://metis.readthedocs.org/en/latest/" rel="nofollow">here</a>, but when I run the easy_install command like:</p>
  
  <pre><code>$ easy_install metis
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I get this error:</p>
  
  <pre><code>RuntimeError: Could not locate METIS dll. Please set the METIS_DLL environment variable to its full path.
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>From the second link above, I understand that I have to specify the full path to some 'METIS shared library' file in the METIS_DLL environment variable. But I don't know what the file is called and where it is located or how I should specify the path in an environment variable. </p>
  
  <p>According to my research on Google, I found out that the file might be called 'libmetis.so' but I don't have any file of that name. Could someone give me a clue on this?</p>
  
  <p>Any help would be appreciated, thanks.</p>