Setting up your environment

Setting up your environment

Please follow every single step below.
If you miss a step, things will only work partially.

You will need to set up by yourself the following pieces:

• Download and install Visual Studio Code.
  If you already have Visual Studio Code, install the latest version.

• the pixi tool: you will get installation instructions here.
  For Windows, follow the “PowerShell” instructions (look for a PowerShell on your system, it’s there I promise.)
  For those who already know a little, pixi is a minimal tool providing environments similar to Anaconda, but we will not use Anaconda;

Warning If you already have anaconda, and see when you open the terminal your line starting with (base):
conda config --set auto_activate_base false

• understand that you will need a terminal for cloning learning materials, installing dependencies and more.

  • MacOS and Linux users should be familiar with their usual terminal application;
  • MacOS users will probably need to install common tools and dependencies with brew;
  • Windows users should find out how to run their PowerShell.

  You are expected to be familiar with the most basic shell commands to list a directory, create and move files, change permissions, etc.

• the git (or git.exe for Windows users) program, for version control.
  Using Git falls out of scope of this seminar, but you are strongly encouraged to become proficient with it.
  You may find resources on GitHub Learning Lab, e.g. the following course for first-timers.

  Try running git --version. If necessary, install git:

  Operating system	Installation command
  Linux (Ubuntu)	sudo apt install git
  MacOS (preferred)	brew install git
  Windows or MacOS	pixi global install git

• clone the resources for the seminar:

  git clone https://github.com/xoolive/pyclass
  

  You may move the folder at any time if you prefer to keep things sorted differently on your computer.

  Before each session, it may be necessary to update the repository and get additional resources with fixes if errors were encountered in previous sessions. You should add the following options in order to avoid merging conflicts:

  git pull --rebase --autostash
  

• With Visual Studio Code, open the pyclass.code-workspace file:

• If you opened the file instead of the workspace, click here:

• Accept the suggestions to install extensions (and to update Visual Studio Code)

• Initialize the pixi interpreter. Open a terminal (Terminal > New Terminal), then

  pixi run python
  

• Open a Python file, e.g. python/numpy_demo.py, wait and look at the Python version down:

• Select the pixi interpreter:

  

  If you can’t see it, refresh the interpreter list:

  

• Confirm you have the new Python version:

• Confirm that you have the same red colour on your Visual Studio Code on your side.

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