1. Set up your computer

Assumptions about your operating system

Bionitio is designed to work on Unix-like operating systems. Typically that means Apple OS X (Mac) and Linux. It may also work on the latest versions of Windows, but that use case is not currently supported.

Are you using a Windows computer?

You may need to log in to a different computer running some flavour of Unix. You can use PuTTY. Windows users may also consider using a virtualisation system such as VirtualBox (https://www.virtualbox.org/) to provide a Unix system for testing Bionitio.

Set up a GitHub account

If you don't already have a GitHub account then go to https://github.com/join to create one.

Check you have Python 3 installed

In your terminal, type python --version.

If Python 2 is showing, then type: python3 --version.

If you have Python 3 installed the output should look like this:

Python 3.X.Y

where X and Y will vary depending on exactly which version you have.

If you don't have Python 3 installed, go to: https://www.python.org/downloads/ and install the latest version of Python 3.

Alternatively, for advanced users, you may wish to install Python 3 from a package management system such as Conda, or Ubuntu etc.

Check you have git installed

In your terminal, type git --version

If you don't have git installed, you can install it from https://git-scm.com/downloads.

Again, advanced users may wish to install git from a package management system.

Check you have curl installed

In your terminal, type curl --version

You will need to have curl installed. It is usually pre-installed on OS X and Linux.