Getting started

Run it locally

This is the ideal way, since you will have everything you need in your day to day student life installed on your computer and all your data will persist.

Install python

Anaconda

Anaconda is our recommendation to install python on all operating systems, since it comes with most needed packages prebundled (batteries included). Another bonus is that conda isn’t just a python package manager like pip, but a package manager for multiple resources (i.e. node.js or latex) and also an environment manager. Yet another bonus of conda is that it has a build pipeline in place, which allows to install all packages from binary (no compiling needed from your side, which at times can be pretty time consuming). Download the installer from the official website of Anaconda, follow the instructions and you will be good to go.

Note

If you are using a Posix system (Linux/OsX) you don’t want to mess with the system python, since many system tools rely on it, and in a worse case scenario you could break your Os.

Using Anaconda only if needed

Depending on other software you run on your computer, which depends on the installed system python version (i.e. QtiPlot), you may not want to use Anaconda as your default python or add it to the PATH variable, since this might cause conflicts and/or break that software.

Posix like Shells:

Users of a Posix like terminal (i.e. bash), can simply add the following function to their shell configuration file (i.e. ~/.bashrc/~/.bash_profile)

Linux/MacOs:

ANACONDA_BIN_DIR=<anaconda-install-folder>/bin
use_conda(){
    export PATH="$ANACONDA_BIN_DIR:$PATH"
}

Windows (git-bash, MinGw):

ANACONDA_BIN_DIR=<anaconda-install-folder>/bin
use_conda(){
    CONDA_PATHS="$ANACONDA_INSTALL_DIR"
    CONDA_PATHS="$ANACONDA_INSTALL_DIR\Library\mingw-w64\bin;$CONDA_PATHS"
    CONDA_PATHS="$ANACONDA_INSTALL_DIR\Library\usr\bin;$CONDA_PATHS"
    CONDA_PATHS="$ANACONDA_INSTALL_DIR\Library\bin;$CONDA_PATHS"
    CONDA_PATHS="$ANACONDA_INSTALL_DIR\Scripts;$CONDA_PATHS"
    export PATH="$CONDA_PATHS:$PATH"
}

CMD on Windows:

If you are working on Windows and for some reason want to use CMD as your terminal, you can create a batch script use_conda.bat in a folder which is part of the PATH variable (i.e. C:\Windows, this needs Admin rights).

@echo off
SET ANACONDA_INSTALL_DIR=<anaconda-install-folder>
SET CONDA_PATHS=%ANACONDA_INSTALL_DIR%
SET CONDA_PATHS=%ANACONDA_INSTALL_DIR%\Library\mingw-w64\bin;%CONDA_PATHS%
SET CONDA_PATHS=%ANACONDA_INSTALL_DIR%\Library\usr\bin;%CONDA_PATHS%
SET CONDA_PATHS=%ANACONDA_INSTALL_DIR%\Library\bin;%CONDA_PATHS%
SET CONDA_PATHS=%ANACONDA_INSTALL_DIR%\Scripts;%CONDA_PATHS%
SET PATH=%CONDA_PATHS%;%PATH%

This will temporarily adds the conda paths to the open terminal and allows you to simply call use_conda/use_conda.bat (which in both cases autocompletes), when you want to use conda. When you open a new terminal, it won’t know about conda and work as it normally does.

Note

For this to work you need to replace <anaconda-install-folder>, with the actual path you installed Anaconda to.

Note

If you use the other software more sparsely than the conda python, you could of course, just turn this approach around and prepend the path to the system python to the PATH variable, when you don’t want to use conda.

Pure CPython

If you don’t want to install conda, this Python installation guide can guide you through the process of getting the pure CPython Interpreter.

Get the project

The sources for python-tools-for-students can be downloaded from the Github repo.

You can either clone the public repository:

$ git clone git://github.com/students-teach-students/python-tools-for-students

Note

This should be the preferred way since you can easily update the files by running $ git pull and won’t clutter your download folder with incremental tarballs.

Or download the tarball:

$ curl -OJL https://github.com/students-teach-students/python-tools-for-students/tarball/master

Once you have a copy of the source, you need to install the dependencies install it with:

$ pip install -r requirements.txt

Start jupyter lab

Once you have everything up and running you just need to open a terminal in the project folder (or its material subfolder) and run the following command:

$ jupyter lab

After that jupyter lab will open a new tab in you default browser and you can start exploring.

Note

For Windows users we recommend to use Git bash to start jupyter lab, since CMD and Powershell might not support all system calls we showcase.

Trouble shooting

If a new notebook isn’t working, it might be that added new requirements, just try installing them by running this command in your terminal:

$ pip install -r requirements.txt

Run it in the cloud

If you don’t want to install python and just play around a bit with the notebooks, you can always just run in our online demo at mybinder.org.

Warning

The binder session expires after 10 minutes inactivity and you will loose all your progress if you didn’t download the files you edited/created.