Setup Instructions

Editor

When you're writing code, it's nice to have a text editor that is optimized for writing code, with features like automatic color-coding of key words. In this specific boot camp, the RStudio IDE provides a suitable text editor. It is, of course, optimized for writing R code, but will also suffice for other purposes, such as writing a Bash shell script. Below we give standard SWC advice for general purpose text editors, if you wish to install one for the future.

The Bash Shell

Bash is a commonly-used shell. Using a shell gives you more power to do more tasks more quickly with your computer.

Git

Git is a state-of-the-art version control system. It lets you track who made changes to what when and has options for easily updating a shared or public version of your code on github.com.

R

R is a programming language that is especially strong for statistical analysis and visualization. To interact with R, we will use RStudio, an interactive development environment (IDE).

Editor

Notepad++ is a popular free code editor for Windows. Be aware that you must add its installation directory to your system path in order to launch it from the command line (or have other tools like Git launch it for you). Please ask your instructor to help you do this.

Git Bash

Install Git for Windows by downloading and running the installer. This will provide you with both Git and Bash in the Git Bash program.

R and RStudio

See below.

Editor

We recommend Text Wrangler or Sublime Text. In a pinch, you can use nano, which should be pre-installed.

Bash

The default shell in all versions of Mac OS X is bash, so no need to install anything. You access bash from the Terminal (found in /Applications/Utilities). You may want to keep Terminal in your dock for this workshop.

Git

Install Git for Mac by download and running the installer.

R and RStudio

See below.

Editor

Kate is one option for Linux users. In a pinch, you can use nano, which should be pre-installed.

Bash

The default shell is usually bash, but if your machine is set up differently you can run it by opening a terminal and typing bash. There is no need to install anything.

Git

If Git is not already available on your machine you can try to install it via your distro's package manager (e.g. apt-get).

R and RStudio

See below.