Contents

MDS software stack install instructions for macOS¶

Important

This guide has been (lightly) adapted from the UBC-Vancouver MDS Install stack under a CC-BY-SA 4.0 license.

These instructions will walk you through installing the required Data Science software stack for the UBC Master of Data Science program. Before starting, ensure that your laptop meets our program requirements:

  • runs one of the following operating systems: macOS 10.15.X (Catalina), Ubuntu 20.04, Windows 10 Professional, Enterprise or Education; version 2004.

    • Windows 10 Home is not sufficient as not all the software required for the program can be installed on that OS. Click here to download Windows 10 Education for free from UBC.

    • When installing Ubuntu, checking the box “Install third party
” will (among other things) install proprietary drivers, which can be helpful for wifi and graphics cards.

  • can connect to networks via a wireless connection

  • has at least 50 GB disk space available

  • has at least 8 GB of RAM

  • uses a 64-bit CPU

  • is at most 6 years old at the start of the program (4 years old or newer is recommended)

  • uses English as the default language

  • student user has full administrative access to the computer

Students’ whose laptops do not meet the requirements specified above will not be able to receive technical assistance from the course team in troubleshooting installation issues.

Installation notes¶

If you have already installed Git, Latex, or any of the R or Python related packages please uninstall these and follow the instructions below to reinstall them (make sure to also remove any user configuration files and backup them if desired). In order to be able to support you effectively and minimize setup issues and software conflicts, we require all students to install the software stack the same way.

In all the sections below, if you are presented with the choice to download either a 64-bit (also called x64) or a 32-bit (also called x86) version of the application always choose the 64-bit version.

Once you have completed these installation instructions, make sure to follow the post-installation notes at the end to check that all software is setup correctly.

UBC Student Email¶

Please sign up for a UBC Student Email. This account will also grant you access to a range of UBC services, including Microsoft Teams and OneDrive. To do so navigate to https://it.ubc.ca/services/email-voice-internet/ubc-student-email-service and follow the instructions under “Get Started”.

Web browser¶

In MDS we will be using many tools that work most reliably on Google Chrome and Firefox (including our online quiz software), so we recommend that you use one of these browsers.

Install Microsoft Office¶

UBC students have free access to a Microsoft Office 365 annual subscription, which is renewed for students enrolled in at least one course. Office 365 includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote, and is available on a variety of platforms, including Windows, Mac, and Linux/Android.

To get your free Office 365 license and download the installer files, visit [UBC IT] (https://it.ubc.ca/services/desktop-print-services/software-licensing/office-365-students) and click Download Office 365. Note that you will need your CWL login credentials in order to download the software and activate your license.

Visual Studio Code¶

The open-source text editor Visual Studio Code (VS Code) is both a powerful text editor and a full-blown Python IDE, which we will use for more complex analysis. You can download and install the macOS version of VS Code from the VS code website https://code.visualstudio.com/download. Once the download is finished, click “Open with Archive utility”, and move the extracted VS Code application from “Downloads” to “Applications”.

Launch from the Terminal (aka command line)¶

  1. Launch VS Code.

  2. Open the Command Palette (⇧⌘P ; shift+command+P).

  3. Type ‘shell command’ to find the “Shell Command: Install ‘code’ command in PATH” command.

  4. Hit Enter

  5. Restart the terminal for the new $PATH value to take effect.

You can open files in VS Code from the Terminal! Alternatively, just type code . in any folder to start editing files in that folder.

You can test that VS Code is installed and can be opened from Terminal by restarting terminal and typing the following command in a Terminal:

code --version

you should see something like this if you were successful:

1.48.2
a0479759d6e9ea56afa657e454193f72aef85bd0
x64

Manual install instructions are here, but remember you’re using the zsh now! steps as well.

VS Code extensions¶

The real magic of VS Code is in the extensions that let you add languages, debuggers, and tools to your installation to support your specific workflow. Now that we have installed all our other Data Science tools, we can install the VS Code extensions that work really well with them. From within VS Code you can open up the Extension Marketplace (read more here) to browse and install extensions by clicking on the Extensions icon in the Activity Bar indicated in the figure below.

To install an extension, you simply search for it in the search bar, click the extension you want, and then click “Install”. There are extensions available to make almost any workflow or task you are interested in more efficient! Here we are interested in setting up VS Code as a Python IDE. To do this, search for and install the following extensions:

  • Python (everything Python: notebooks, debugging, linting, formatting, etc.)

  • markdownlint (markdown linting and style checking extension)

  • GitLens - Git supercharged (powerful extension that extends VS Code’s native git capabilities)

  • (Optional) Bracket Pair Colorizer 2 (add colour to help distinguish your brackets: (), [], {})

This video tutorial is an excellent introduction to using VS Code in Python.

GitHub.com¶

We will use the publicly available GitHub.com.

Sign up for a free account at GitHub.com if you don’t have one already.

Configure Git on your computer¶

We will be using the command line version of Git as well as Git through RStudio and JupyterLab. Some of the Git commands we will use are only available since Git 2.23, so if your Git is older than this version, we ask you to update it using the Xcode command line tools (not all of Xcode), which includes Git.

Open Terminal and type the following command to install Xcode command line tools:

xcode-select --install

After installation, in terminal type the following to ask for the version:

git --version

you should see something like this (does not have to be the exact same version) if you were successful:

git version 2.24.3 (Apple Git-127)

Note: If you run into trouble, this is the time to post on Piazza with your error message and ask for help!

Configuring Git user info¶

Next, we need to configure Git by telling it your name and email. To do this type the following into the terminal (replacing Jane Doe and janedoe@example.com, with your name and email (the same used to sign up for GitHub), respectively):

git config --global user.name "Jane Doe"
git config --global user.email janedoe@example.com

Note: to ensure that you haven’t made a typo in any of the above, you can view your global Git configurations by either opening the configuration file in a text editor (e.g. via the command code ~/.gitconfig) or by typing git config --list --global.

Discord¶

For our MDS courses and program announcements, correspondence and course forums we use the communication tool Slack. Slack can be accessed via the web browser, however we strongly recommend installing the Slack App. The Slack app can be installed from the Mac App Store, or from the Slack website. Installation instructions from the Slack website install method are here: https://slack.com/intl/en-ca/help/articles/207677868-Download-Slack-for-Mac

Lab 0 - Installation and Setup MDS software stack install instructions for Windows