Installation

SpecDAL is available via pip (pip install specdal) or on Github. This page provides detailed walkthrough of the installation process intended for users who are not comfortable in Python environment.

Prerequisites

• python3
• pip3

Setting up the virtual environment (recommended)

Although not necessary, it is good practice to install Python packages in a virtual environment. Virtual environments provide an isolated and self-contained environment for your Python session, which can help prevent conflicts across packages. We will walk through the process of creating one on Ubuntu Linux for demonstration.

• Install virtualenv using pip installer.

  $ pip install --user virtualenv
  

• Create a directory for storing virtual environments.

  $ mkdir ~/venv
  

• Create a new virtual environment called specdal_env running python3 by default.

  $ virtualenv -p python3 ~/venv/specdal_env
  

  If you’re curious, you can navigate to that directory and find all the components that make up a Python environment. For example, packages are installed in ~/venv/specdal_env/lib and binaries are stored in ~/venv/specdal_env/bin.

• Before starting a Python session, we can activate the virtual environment as follows.

  $ source ~/venv/specdal/bin/activate
  

  Note: On windows, there should be an executable ~/venv/specdal/bin/activate.exe with a similar effect.

  You’ll notice the name of your virtual environment in parentheses.

  (specdal_env) $
  

• Once in this environment, we can install and use SpecDAL or other packages.

  (specdal_env) $ ... # install specdal
  (specdal_env) $ ... # write and run programs
  

• When we’re done, we can exit the virtual environment.

  $ deactivate
  

Install via pip

• Stable version

$ pip3 install specdal --upgrade

• Latest development version

$ pip3 install specdal --pre

Install from Github

SpecDAL can be found on Enspec’s Github repo. Stable release can be found on master branch and the development version on dev branch.

Github walkthrough

1. Open terminal or Git-bash and navigate to the desired directory, ~/specdal for this demo.

   cd ~/specdal

2. The following command will clone the SpecDAL’s Github repository.

   $ git clone https://github.com/EnSpec/SpecDAL.git
   

   You’ll notice a new subdirectory SpecDAL with the source code.

3. Install SpecDAL.

   $ cd ./SpecDAL
   $ python setup.py install
   

Install in development mode

If you’d like to modify SpecDAL’s source, it’s useful to install the package in development mode.

• Install in development mode

  $ python setup.py develop
  

• Modify the source and run/test it.

• Uninstall development mode

  $ python setup.py develop --uninstall