Modified on: 02.10.23
A. Install Docker
You will not need to install all the software needed for the tutorials on your laptop directly. We will package all the needed software in a so-called container (see e.g. Wikipedia). You will need to install on your laptop a container platform, i.e. a software that allows you to run containers. Docker and Podman are examples of such container platforms. The following instructions will guide you through the installation and verification of a container platform.
- Some Linux distributions come with Podman installed. Podman provides the command docker, which we will need. In order to verify whether the command docker is available on your laptop, run the following command in the terminal:
docker --version
If the version is correctly displayed, then you can jump to point 5. If a "command not found" error is returned, then you will need to follow the next step. - You will need to install Docker. To do so, visit the page https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/. You will see a list of platforms. By clicking on the relevant platform, you will be redirected to detailed installation instructions. Important: Check carefully the OS requirements before trying to install Docker! For instance, Ubuntu Mantic Minotaur is not supported yet (as of 01.10.23)!
- If you have Linux, you can follow the optional post-installation steps described at https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/linux-postinstall/, which configure the host to work more smoothly with docker.
- In order to check that the installation was successful, you can run the following command in the terminal:
docker --version
If a "command not found" error is returned, then something went wrong. You should start from point 2 and read the instructions more carefully. If you get an error again after the second attempt, contact the local organizers for support. - Another way to check your installation is to download and run a simple container. Run the following commands in the terminal:
docker pull hello-world
docker run hello-world
After the second command your should get an output that starts with
Hello from Docker!
This message shows that your installation appears to be working correctly.
B. Install extra software
Even though you will have access to all needed software via remote machines and containers, it would be good to have git, gcc, g++, python (≥3.6), make on your laptop.
For Linux
You should figure out how to install software on your particular distribution. For instance, with Ubuntu or Debian-based distributions, you can just run the following line in the terminal:
apt-get install g++ make git python3
For MacOS
- Install XCode from the AppStore.
- Install the XCode Command Line Tools by running the following command in the terminal:
xcode-select --install
Follow the instructions on screen. - Install Homebrew. Homebrew is a package manager for MacOS, through which you can install essentially any package that is also available under any common Linux distribution. In order to install Homebrew, follow the instruction at https://brew.sh/.
- In the terminal, run the following command:
brew install make git python3
For Windows
- In order to have access to a large repository of GNU and Open Source packages on Windows, we recommend the installation of Cygwin. Follow the instructions at https://sourceware.org/cygwin/. After you install Cygwin, you can install auxiliary packages (like git and make). For this, you will need to dig in the documentation of Cygwin.
- You can install Python along with a large number of packages by installing Anaconda, see https://www.anaconda.com/download.
