Please come to the workshop with a laptop already configured as described below. If you have any problems with any of these steps, please open an issue.
Download the workshop folder using git:
% git clone https://github.com/bmorris3/astropy-workshop-belfast-2019.git
If you don't have git installed, you can download the ZIP file by pressing the green Clone or download button at https://github.com/bmorris3/astropy-workshop-belfast-2019 and selecting Download ZIP. However, this option is less prefered because it makes it more difficult for you to update your copy of the repository if updates are made.
Anaconda includes conda, conda build, Python and 100+ automatically installed, open source scientific packages and their dependencies that have been tested to work well together, including SciPy, NumPy and many others.
Check if Anaconda is already installed.
% conda info
If Anaconda is not already installed, follow the Anaconda instructions for your operating system: https://docs.anaconda.com/anaconda/install/
Choose between installing the full Anaconda (3 GB) or Miniconda (400 MB). Miniconda comes with fewer default packages so it's faster to download and takes up less drive space.
Anaconda includes an environment manager called conda. You can create, export, list, remove and update environments that have different versions of Python and/or packages installed in them.
Create a conda environment for this workshop using a yml file. The python version and all needed packages, including astropy, are listed in the environment.yml file
On mac or linux, open your terminal and verify your shell environment:
% echo $SHELL
If the output text does not contain bash then switch to the bash shell before being able to run anything related to Anaconda.
On windows, just open the Anaconda Prompt terminal app.
Now navigate to this directory in the terminal. For example, if you installed the astropy-workshop directory in your home directory, you could type:
On a mac/linux:
% cd astropy-workshop/00-Install_and_Setup/
In windows:
% cd astropy-workshop\00-Install_and_Setup\
And finally, on any platform, to install and activate the astropy-workshop environment, type:
% conda env create -n astropy-workshop --file environment.yml
% conda activate astropy-workshop
The name of the new conda environment created above should be displayed next to the terminal prompt: (astropy-workshop) %
Run the check_env.py script to check the Python environment and some of the required dependencies:
(astropy-workshop) % python check_env.py
If the script reports that some of the versions don't match, update the reported packages using the conda update, namely:
(astropy-workshop) % conda update <packagename>
The exception to this is if the astroquery package is reported as out-of-date. If you created the astropy-workshop environment using the environment.yml file, astroquery is installed using the pip package manager, because it typically has access to newer versions of astroquery. To update a package installed with pip, use:
(astropy-workshop) % pip install --pre <packagename> --upgrade