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Complete Setup Instructions

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Uday Guntupalli edited this page Dec 1, 2020 · 2 revisions

This page provides an overview of the steps/resources to use to get setup with Python. While this is not the only way to do, this is one way that I have found reasonable success and I encourage anybody going through this process to provide suggestions and/or feedback, so the process can further be enhanced. This can be broadly categorized into two sections:

  1. One-Time Setup: As the name suggests, this mostly involves installation and setup of the tools and softwares required
  2. Project by Project Setup: This mostly outlines and limits on how to get access to a specific project

One-Time Setup:

Step 1: Create a GitHub account using these instructions

Step 2: Install Git using these instructions

Step 3: Install Anaconda using these instructions

Step 4: Choose an IDE using this resource. My recommendation is to limit to Pycharm or VSCode if you want to get hands on with code or stopping at step by step. If all you care about is running the application by using a GUI - which may not always be the case, then you can potentially just use Jupyter Notebooks. Please schedule time with me if I am unable to cover this during our longer meeting if this is your preferred option.

Step 5: Depending on the IDE that you have chosen, use the following resources to customize your IDE

Project by Project Setup:

  1. After completing the one-time setup, you have mostly everything you need already setup and good to go. The following set of instructions provide some helpful tips and commands on how to get setup with a project/tool that has been developed and is ready for use.

  2. In order to make a copy/clone a project onto your local machine, the following step would help get the code from Github to your local machine

  • If you are a Pycharm user, follow step 6 in these instructions.
  • If you are a VSCode user, follow step 10 in these instructions
  1. Once, you have cloned the project, you have all the code that is associated with the project on your local machine. It is a good practice to set up a virtual environment for each individual project. A virtual environment offers separation from project to project in terms of the requirements and helps to keep things clean. Typically, the project folder that you have cloned will have an environment.yml which compiles and condenses all the packages you will need for successfully setting up a virtual environment for the project.
  • The following set of instructions will help you get familiar with how to set up a virtual environment Please note that Anaconda Navigator - the GUI tool has demonstrated some issues, so if you run into problems with that, it is not uncommon and it is most likely that you can achieve the desired result by using Anaconda Prompt
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