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Software, tools, etc.

This course requires a number of free services and tools available on Unix/Mac systems. If you're on Windows, see below for options.

See the Technical FAQ page if you run into snags and/or report an issue.

Services and Platforms

  • Slack: Join the course Slack workspace through Canvas.
  • Sign up for GitHub.

Windows

Windows users will need to use VSCode and Windows Subsystem for Linux

This provides a ready-made Linux shell environment (without a graphical Desktop) that integrates nicely with the Visual Studio Code Editor.

Follow the instructions here to get up and running.

With this option, you will need to perform the additional Linux setup steps described below.

Code Editor

You'll need a text editor designed for writing code. Beginners should use VSCode. More experienced users are free to use editors of their choosing.

Shell Terminal

Mac and Linux both come with terminal programs, which provide a text-based interface to your operating system and related command-line tools.

On Mac, use Command + spacebar to perform a Spotlight search for "Terminal".

For a more pleasant shell experience, we strongly recommend installing iTerm2.

Version control

Git is a version control system we use to save and submit code and data for class assignments and projects.

Mac

Install Homebrew, a software package manager used on the command line. Then use Homebrew to install git.

Open a Terminal shell (see above) and run the below commands. Along the way, you'll be prompted to agree to Apple licensing terms and to provide your laptop password.

xcode-select --install

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

brew doctor
brew update
brew install git

The commands above are based on Steps 1-3 of How to Install Xcode, Homebrew, Git etc. See the blog post for more details.

Linux

Open a terminal shell and run:

sudo apt install git-all

Python

Python 3.10 - 3.11

Before installing Python, first open a shell and run: python --version.

If you have Python 3.10 or 3.11, you're all set.

If you have an older Python version (e.g. 2.7, 3.9, etc.), follow the below instructions for Mac users.

Mac

Mac users will use Homebrew to install Python. At a high level, the process involves installing a tool called pyenv. This tool allows you to install and manage multiple versions of Python.

We'll use it to install Python 3.11 (the latest version of time of writing).

First, open a Terminal and determine which shell you are using (newer Macs will use zsh, older will have bash).

echo $SHELL

Once that is complete, you're ready to install a few dependencies for pyenv, followed by pyenv itself.

Execute the below commands one by one (i.e. copy and paste each row individually rather than all the commands at once).

# Note, some of these commands can take several minutes to run!!

brew install openssl readline sqlite3 xz zlib
brew install pyenv
pyenv install 3.11.6
pyenv global 3.11.6

Then, follow the steps in the pyenv configuration instructions to configure your shell.

Below is the workflow for folks on the Zsh shell, which is the current default for Macs. See the pyenv docs if you're on bashrc, or ask how you can change your default shell.

echo 'export PYENV_ROOT="$HOME/.pyenv"' >> ~/.zshrc
echo '[[ -d $PYENV_ROOT/bin ]] && export PATH="$PYENV_ROOT/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.zshrc
echo 'eval "$(pyenv init -)"' >> ~/.zshrc

Close and restart the Terminal.

Type python --version, which should return 3.11.6.

If you do not see Python 3.11.6 at the end of this process, please reach out for help!

Linux

Use pyenv, a tool that allows you to install and manage multiple versions of Python. Run these commands from a shell:

# Clone pyenv
git clone https://github.com/pyenv/pyenv.git ~/.pyenv

# Add pyenv vars to bash config
echo 'export PYENV_ROOT="$HOME/.pyenv"' >> ~/.bashrc
echo 'export PATH="$PYENV_ROOT/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bashrc
echo -e 'if command -v pyenv 1>/dev/null 2>&1; then\n  eval "$(pyenv init -)"\nfi' >> ~/.bashrc

# Reinitialize shell
exec "$SHELL"

# Install build dependencies
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends make build-essential libssl-dev zlib1g-dev libbz2-dev libreadline-dev libsqlite3-dev wget curl llvm libncurses5-dev xz-utils tk-dev libxml2-dev libxmlsec1-dev libffi-dev liblzma-dev

# Install python version 3.11.6
pyenv install 3.11.6
pyenv global 3.11.6

Configure

Open a Terminal/shell.

Download and run our configuration script. You'll need to answer a few questions along the way.

cd ~

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/stanfordjournalism/padj23-code/main/code/configure_mac_linux.py

python configure_mac_linux.py

The configuration script will prompt you to upload your upload your ssh public key to GitHub.

DataKit

Before this step, make sure you've completed all configuration described above.

DataKit is a command-line tool we'll use to manage code and data for class assignments. It provides a standardized structure for projects and allows us to easily submit code to GitHub.

Run the following command to install DataKit:

curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/stanfordjournalism/cookiecutter-stanford-progj/master/requirements.txt | xargs pip install

Follow these instructions to complete the DataKit setup.