ndarray is a template library that provides multidimensional array objects in C++, with an interface and features designed to mimic the Python 'numpy' package as much as possible. More information can be found in the Doxygen-generated documentation (which is unhelpfully not built automatically at present...read ndarray.h instead). BUILDING FROM GIT ndarray includes the Boost.NumPy library using git's "submodules" feature. When you clone the ndarray repository with git, you'll get an empty Boost.NumPy directory. Even if you don't plan to use Boost.NumPy (which is required only if you want to build the Boost.Python bindings for ndarray), it *is* necessary to checkout the Boost.NumPy source (as parts of the build system is shared). So, immediately after cloning ndarray, you'll need to run: git submodule update --init --recursive From there, you'll be able to build ndarray and (optionally) Boost.NumPy together just by running "scons" from the root of the ndarray clone. BUILDING FROM COMPRESSED SOURCE GitHub's automatically generated tarballs and zip files don't include the Boost.NumPy submodule or the git metadata needed to run "git submodule", so these features can't be used to download ndarray. When we post release downloads, however, we'll include the Boost.NumPy source so they can be built directly.