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Pre‐Install Setup
These scripts rely on an entire ecosystem of Python that can be a little bit complicated to set up. This page aims to help with everything that's necessary prior to installation of this repository.
The recommended version of Python for these scripts is Python 3.12.2.
These scripts should be able to be run by a variety of Python versions, however later versions may introduce unanticipated errors (Python 3.12.4 has a known issue with this repo), and earlier versions (prior to Python 3.8 in particular), may not contain all of the necessary features.
You can run different versions of Python on the same system. I would recommend not running two versions of Python 3.12, though.
To install Python 3.12.2, go to this link, scroll to the bottom, and download the installer of your choice (for MacOS and Windows).
To invoke Python, simply open up a Terminal (or PowerShell) and type python and hit enter. If you have Python installed, you'll enter an "interactive session" of Python. The first line of the session will give you the version number of Python that you're running.
That version number may or may not match 3.12.2, it depends on your system. You may have ended up in Python 2.7, even. Or, you may have gotten an error that python is not recognized as a command, even though you're sure you installed it.
You may need to use a different invocation. Try python3 or python312. These more precise invocations will be helpful when you go to set up the virtual environment, as you'll want to use python 3.12.2 for that. Once the virtual environment is running, you will be able to run the scripts by simply typing python.
You'll need a text editor for these scripts. Text editors aren't like Word - .docx (and .xlsx) files are actually zipped XML files. Python code, and the various text files we work with, are just text, there's no formatting to speak of. Trying to use Word (or similar) to work with this repository is asking for trouble.
There are a lot of text editors out there and everyone has their favorites. See this list from Stack Overflow for popular choices.
I would add two more:
For Windows, Notepad++ is a great choice and it's far easier for non-experts to use than VS Code
For Mac, TextEdit comes with your machine and is more than adequate for the work involved here