Testing Your setup

If you have access to a command line, and Python installed, and a text editor or IDE ready to go, here’s how you can make sure it’s all working correctly.

Python Interpreter

If you have Python installed and know how to run a python file, give this a try to make sure you’re all setup:

Create a file called install_test.py, with the following content:

#!/usr/bin/env python3

import sys
print("This is my first python program")

version = sys.version_info

if version.major == 3:
    if version.minor < 8:
        print("You should be running version 3.8 or higher")
    else:
        print("I am running python {}.{} -- all good!".format(
               version.major, version.minor))

else:
    print("You need to run Python 3!")
    print("This is version: {}.{}".format(version.major, version.minor))

Run it with your version of python. It should result in something like this:

This is my first python program
I am running python 3.8 -- all good!

If you can’t figure out how to run it, see: How to run a python file

If you can run, it but don’t get that nice “all good” message, then you either do not have Python installed, or you have the wrong version.

Go back to Setup Details

And try again.

Run git

You should be able to run git on the command line:

$ git --version
git version 2.20.1 (Apple Git-117)

It should be version >= 2

iPython

iPython is not critical, but it is very nice. You should be able to run it with:

$ ipython
Python 3.6.2 (v3.6.2:5fd33b5926, Jul 16 2017, 20:11:06)
Type 'copyright', 'credits' or 'license' for more information
IPython 6.1.0 -- An enhanced Interactive Python. Type '?' for help.

And get something like that.

ipython can be quit by typing quit