Desktop Install

Install Prerequisites

Ubuntu

sudo apt install python3 python3-pip openjdk-11-jre xdg-utils
pip3 install setuptools wheel

• If openjdk-11-jre is not available, openjdk-8-jre will work. Versions of Java over 11 may have difficulties working with Spark.
• If xdg-utils is not available in your distribution, you may get an error when launching vizier and will need to manually open the provided URL in a browser, but it is not critical.

macOS

For best results install Java JDK-11. If you have a later JDK installed, Apache Arrow support may not work properly.

With Homebrew

brew install python 
pip3 install setuptools wheel

With MacPorts

sudo port install py39-pip
pip3 install setuptools wheel

Windows 10

Enable Windows Subsystem for Linux

Install bash

sudo apt install python3 openjdk-11-jre-headless
ln -s /usr/bin/python3 /usr/local/bin/python
curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py -o get-pip.py
python get-pip.py

Note: WSL2 does not make it easy to access servers running in the Linux subsystem from your desktop web browser. We have yet to find a consistent way to provide a frontend for windows users running WSL2. A reliable workaround has been to install a web browser within WSL itself. For example, sudo apt install firefox.

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Install Vizier

Using coursier

coursier install vizier --channel https://vizierdb.info/coursier.json

You may need to add your user bin directory (typically ~/.local/bin) to your PATH environment variable

Using Boostrap

1. Download the latest Vizier release
2. Make it runnable cd ~/Downloads; chmod +x vizier
3. Put it in your path if [ -d /usr/local/bin ] ; then sudo cp vizier /usr/local/bin/vizier; else sudo cp vizier /usr/bin/vizier; fi

(The last line installs vizier into /usr/local/bin if it exists and /usr/bin otherwise. Adjust the last line as needed if you prefer your binaries elsewhere)

Run

vizier

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FAQ

How do I uninstall Vizier?

coursier uninstall vizier
rm -r ~/.cache/coursier

Why don't you fully support versions of Java over 11?

Recent versions of Java introduce significant security restrictions that break parts of Apache Spark, which Vizier uses for data processing. Notably, we see:

• Apache Arrow support in Python (i.e., Pandas/Vizier integration via vizierdb.get_dataframe) does not work in Java 9+
• Running on a v9+ JVM, Vizier dumps out an IllegalArgumentException. This is just a warning, you can continue to use Vizier normally.

If necessary, you can download Java JRE 8 from here. Note that Java does allow you to have multiple JREs installed at the same time by setting the JAVA_HOME environment variable.

I get a bunch of goop saying "java.lang.IllegalArgumentException"

Spark has limited support for Java JRE 9 or later. This message is only a warning and can usually be ignored, however see above as to why we do not support Java 11.

I can't connect to Vizier when running under WSL 2

WSL2 runs a separate VM that is NAT-bridged to the main windows environment. See here for a possible workaround (make sure to include port 5050 in the list in the script).

Our users have reported that a more stable workaround is simply to install a web browser (e.g., sudo apt install firefox) within the Ubuntu VM itself.