Software Carpentry at QM

h1. C4DM2013 Software

You should ensure the following software is installed on your laptop before you arrive at the bootcamp, so that we can get started promptly with the tutorials.

h2. Shortlist

* Bash (the particular Unix shell we’ll be using)

* Mercurial and EasyMercurial (for version control)

* Python 2.6+ (the scripting language used in the course)

* Firefox with SQLite Manager add-on (relational database)

* A text editor (for programming!)

* You can also save time on the day by creating an account beforehand at the "SoundSoftware code site":http://code.soundsoftware.ac.uk.

For the third day of the workshop (audio and music) you’ll need to have the following Python packages installed:

Numpy

SciPy

Matplotlib

Scikits Audiolab

We’ll add installation notes on these packages as soon as possible. You you may also like to bring some headphones along with you.

If you run into any trouble, please leave a comment at the bottom of the page. We’ll check them regularly.

Installation on Linux

Bash, Python and Firefox are all available using the appropriate package management tool in all major Linux distributions. Please check that the Python version is 2.x, (2.6 or higher, preferrably). If not, you may need to install a newer version “by hand” or upgrade your Linux installation.

The SQLite Manager add-on can be installed through the “Add-ons Manager” in Firefox.

EasyMercurial can be downloaded as a .deb package (for Debian or Ubuntu installations) from the EasyMercurial download page. Your package manager should automatically install any dependencies, including Mercurial itself. On Red Hat or other Linux distributions you will probably need to install Mercurial first using your package manager, then download the EasyMercurial source code package and compile and install it using the instructions in the included file README.txt: just run qmake and then make. The qmake tool is part of the qt-devel package, which you may need to install first.

If you use Linux, you probably already have a favourite text editor. Emacs and Nano are popular choices, but there are many others.

Installation on Windows

Note: We have recently changed these requirements from Cygwin to

MinGW/MSYS

You should install MinGW and MSYS. Check that you can run (from the Windows Start menu) MinGW -> MinGW Shell in order to open a Bash prompt.

Install Python 2.7 using the MSI installer from python.org, then both NumPy and SciPy packages from scipy.org.

Install the scikits.audiolab package from this site, and matplotlib from SourceForge.

You can download Firefox from the Mozilla web site, and then the SQLite Manager add-on can be installed through the “Add-ons Manager” in Firefox.

EasyMercurial can be downloaded from the EasyMercurial download page and the Windows installer will also install Mercurial itself.

You will need to edit the PATH environment variable to add Python and Mercurial. To do this, go to Control Panel -> System and Security -> System -> Advanced system settings -> Advanced and click the Environment Variables button; then edit the PATH user variable and copy and paste

C:\Python27;C:\Program Files\EasyMercurial;C:\Program Files (x86)\EasyMercurial

onto the end of it.

You can use Wordpad or Notepad as a text editor, or install another editor such as Sublime Text.

Installation on Mac OSX

OSX comes with Bash and Python.

You can download Firefox from the Mozilla web site, and then the SQLite Manager add-on can be installed through the “Add-ons Manager” in Firefox.

You can download Mercurial from the Mercurial web site and EasyMercurial from the EasyMercurial download page.

There are many text editors available for OSX.

The following instructions have been tested under OSX Lion (10.7). Please let us know if you run into any problem

To install the remaining software, you’ll need to have both XCode and Homebrew installed.

XCode: Please follow the instructions on this page to install XCode using the AppStore;

Homebrew: Please follow the instructions in the Homebrew’s page.

The easiest way to install SciPy, Numpy and Matplotlib is to use the following script (just follow the instructions on the page): ScipySuperpack

Audiolab depends on libsndfile, so you need to install it first. To install it run the following command on the Terminal:

brew install libsndfile

After this, you need to install Audiolab. To install Audiolab, you need to run the following commands on the Terminal (you might need to be sudo):

easy_install pip

pip install scikits.audiolab

Alternate approach: using a Virtual Machine

If you would prefer, you can install a VirtualBox image of a virtual

machine running Linux with the necessary software already installed.

You can download the VirtualBox disk image file from the following

link: SoundSoftware_SoftwareCarpentry-20120910.zip (1.2GB) (SHA-1: fff6c4804e61e9fc2aef41f8f5e412eec44909cd). After

downloading, unzip the file to obtain a .vdi disk image.

To use it, you will need to install VirtualBox from

http://virtualbox.org. Install VirtualBox, then create a new virtual

machine using the default settings (with however much memory you think

you can allocate to it) using the .vdi file as its disk image.

When you run the virtual machine, you will need to log in as a user:

the default user is called “ssw” and has password “ssw2012″.

Testing the installed software

We recommend that you try the following simple tests to ensure that everything is installed and working correctly before the course starts.

Bash

At the prompt, type “whoami”. You should be told what your user name is on the computer you are using.

Python

At the prompt, type “print 2+2″ and check that you agree with the result.

Then type “import sqlite3″ and verify that you don’t see an error message.

SQLite Manager

Open SQLite Manager from Firefox. In Firefox 10 on Linux this is under the “Tools” menu, but this may vary depending on the version and operating system you are using.

Create a new database: Database -> New Database.

Mercurial

At the Bash prompt, type “hg”. You should see a list of basic Mercurial commands.

EasyMercurial

Create a directory (folder) somewhere on your computer.

Start EasyMercurial and create a repository in your new directory: Open -> File folder -> navigate to your directory  and click “OK”.

Text editor

Create and save a file with some plain text in it.