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.

• Install uv to manage the Python environment. Follow the installation instructions for your operating system.

• 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 use PowerShell. The course commands (uv, Git commands) also work in Command Prompt (cmd.exe), but the uv installation instructions use PowerShell. In Visual Studio Code, choose Terminal > New Terminal and select the PowerShell profile if needed.

  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, follow the Git installation instructions for your operating system.

• 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 the recommended extensions and update Visual Studio Code.

• Create the course environment. Open a terminal (Terminal > New Terminal), then run:

  uv sync --locked
  

  This creates the .venv directory with the Python version and packages required for the course.

• Open a Python file, e.g. python/numpy_demo.py.

• Select the .venv interpreter. It should be marked Recommended in the interpreter picker:

  

  If it does not appear, run Python: Select Interpreter again and refresh the interpreter list.

• Confirm that the status bar shows the selected Python version:

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

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