Installation

You need a recent version of Python 3 installed as well as a couple of packages that we will use in the course (see below). At the very least, version 3.3. Version 3.5 is recommended. You can check the version you have installed with:

$ python3 --version

Option 1: Anaconda (good for beginners)

Go to https://www.continuum.io/downloads and download the Python 3.5 version for your system.

Windows

Install Python 3 using all of the defaults for installation but make sure to check “Make Anaconda the default Python”.

Mac OS X

Install Python 3 using the defaults for installation.

Linux

In your terminal run the installer that you just downloaded, e.g.:

$ bash Anaconda3-4.0.0-Linux-x86_64.sh

If you answer “yes” to the question “Do you wish the installer to prepend the Anaconda3 install location to PATH in your /home/user/.bashrc ?” then this will make the Anaconda distribution the default Python. You can always undo this by editing your .bashrc. Otherwise you go with the defaults.

Option 2: Virtual Environments (Linux or Mac OS X)

For this make sure that you have virtualenv installed. This also assumes that Python is installed on the system. See also http://docs.python-guide.org/en/latest/dev/virtualenvs/.

Go to https://github.com/uit-no/python-course and download the repository as zip file (click on “Download ZIP” on the right).

Then extract the zip file and inside python-course-master you can install all requirements using:

$ python3 -m venv venv
$ source venv/bin/activate
$ pip install -r requirements_course.txt

We recommend this approach to seasoned users. This because a possible pitfall with this approach is that some of the pip packages need C compilation, which depends on a number of system packages that pip can’t install. If the “pip install” step fails with compilation errors, then you likely don’t have some required C libraries installed on your system.

Option 3: Vagrant

If you are familiar with Vagrant, then a Linux virtual machine with everything you need is just a “git clone” and a “vagrant up” away.

First, download and unpack or clone the course repository from GitHub. Then, open a terminal, cd to the directory in which you have unpacked or cloned the repository, and run:

$ vagrant up

In a couple of minutes, you’ll have a VM that has everything installed. Log in to the machine and look around like so:

$ vagrant ssh

Then, once you are logged in:

$ cd /vagrant
$ ls

One thing you will for sure like to do is to start jupyter, which we use in the course for some presentations and exercises:

$ cd /vagrant
$ ./run_jupyter.sh

Now just point your browser to http://localhost:8888.