For the mentored sprints, we will be using Python. Installing all of Python's research packages individually can be a bit complicated, so we recommend using Anaconda which provides a variety of useful packages/tools.
To download Anaconda, follow the link https://www.anaconda.com/download/ and select Python 3. Following the download, run the installer as per usual on your machine.
Git is a version control software that records changes to a file or set of files. Git is especially helpful for software developers as it allows changes to be tracked (including who and when) when working on a project.
To download Git, go to the following link and choose the correct version for your operating system: https://git-scm.com/downloads.
GitHub is a web-based service for version control using Git. You will need to set up an account at https://github.com. Basic GitHub accounts are free.
Text editors are tools with powerful features designed to optimize writing code. There are several text editors that you can choose from. Here are some we recommend:
- VS code. Download at: https://code.visualstudio.com/.
- Atom. Download at: https://atom.io.
- Pycharm. Download at: https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/download/.
We suggest trying several editors before settling on one.
Bring your own laptop. Setting up your local environment can be time-consuming, and the step can vary from one project to another. We recommend that you check out the contributing guidelines of the project that you're interested in, and pre-install the requirements before coming to the sprint. If you're stuck in any way, let us know so we can help. We have also requested each of the projects that signed up to have their contributing guidelines up to date by April 3rd.
- Step-by-step guide for making your first Pull Request to an open-source project: https://slides.com/cheukting_ho/1st_pr