How to set up a python project

These are some general best practise tips how to organize your seminar project.

Optional: Set up a git account

git is a software that safes your work on the internet so you can always go back to earlier versions if something goes wrong. A bit like a backup system, but also great for collaborative work.

  • install the "git" software on your computer
  • go to github.com (or try gitlab.org) and get yourself an account.
  • make there a new repository, and name it e.g. my-sample-project
  • if it's a Python project, select the pathon template for the .gitignore file (this will ignore typical python temporary files for upload).
  • go to the main repository page, open the "code" dropdown button and cope the "clone" URL.
  • On your computer in a shell/terminal/console, go where your project should reside (I strongly encourage to use a path without whitespace in it) and type
    git clone <URL>

    and the project folder should be created and is linked with the git repository.

  • learn about the basic git commands by searching for a quick tutorial (git cheat sheet).

install python

  • install a python version, use version >= 3.6

this depends a lot on your operating system.
For Mac and windows it might be enough to type python in your application search and then follow the instructions for installation, if not already installed.

set up a virtual environment

  • creat a project folder
  • enter your project folder,
    cd my-sample-project
  • create a virtual environment that will contain all the python packages that you use in your project:
    virtualenv -p python3 my-project_env

    If virtualenv is not installed, you can either install it or create the environment with

    python3 -m venv my-project_env
  • then activate the environment
    ./my-project_env/bin/activate

    (might be different for other operating systems)

  • you should recognize the activated environment by it's name in brackets preceding the prompt, e.g. something like
    (my-project_env) user@system:/bla/path/$

Get yourself a python IDE

IDE means 'integrated desktop environment' and is something like a very comfortable editor for python source files. If you already know and use one of the many, I wouldn't know a reason to switch. If not, I'd suggest you take a look at VSC, the visual studio code editor as it's free of costs, available on many platforms and can be extended with many available plugins.

I've made a screencast (in German) on how to install python and jupyter notebooks on Windows

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