Installing Python by Miniforge

Installing Python by Miniforge#

There are two major repositories for python and its pakcages:

Python Package Index (PyPI): https://pypi.org
Official repository for python distribution:
conda-forge: https://conda-forge.org
Communit-based repository using conda, an open environment managemnet tool used in Anaconda.

Here we use miniforge that allows you to flexibly set-up enviroments and install Packages.

To install python and packages by yourself, you should first start a Terminal, from which you type commands line-by-line.

On Linux, Terminal or Console is a standard intreface.
On MacOX, you can open Terminal application in the Utiliies folder.
On Windows, you can install free Terminal application from MicroSoft Store: https://aka.ms/terminal

Then run it using the terminal as described in the download page. On Mac and Linux, it would be:

bash Miniforge3-xx-yy.sh

This installs conda, a standard command for setting up python environments and installing packages.

Before starting installation, it is better to setup a specific environment for each project to allow using the best version of Python and Packages.

For example, we can create an evironment iscicomp by

conda create -n iscicomp

To see what environments are there, you can use

conda env list

and move to one of them by

conda activate iscicomp

Now let us install the latest stable version of python by

conda install python

If you prefer a paricular version of python, you can do, e.g.

conda install python=3.10

Please run python and check that a python of the right version starts up.
You can type >>> exit() to finish python.

Now you can install any other packages as needed. For this book, the following is sufficient:

conda install jupyter numpy matplotlib ipympl scipy scikit-learn