We will be using Anaconda to install and manage a Python 'environment' for us to work in. Rather than using any pre-installed Python interpretors this has the advantage that it will not conflict with any existing libraries, and everyone will be using the same verisons.
For the course it will be easiest to work directly on your laptop - so please install these packages there. Python is cross-platform though so switching to work on remote servers later is straight forward.
If you haven't already got Anaconda installed, download and install it from: https://www.continuum.io/downloads. Choose Python 3.5 as this is the latest version of Python.
Now you have installed Anaconda we can create an evironment to work in. Open your terminal (or 'Anaconda Prompt' on Windows) and type:
conda create -c conda-forge -n python_workshop cis jupyter pytest iris-sample-data
Where we have created an environment called python_workshop, and installed packages called cis (and all its dependencies), jupyter, iris-sample-data and pytest from the conda-forge channel.
This may take a while as it installs all of the Python libraries and C libraries on which they depend, including NetCDF and HDF.
Many of our examples use realistic sample data, but different packages use different datasets. The Iris sample data should aready have been downloaded as part of the iris-sample-data package installed in the previous step.
The CIS example data can be downloaded from Dropbox using this link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/6iqb6h84h6kwxk0/WorkshopData2016.zip?dl=0
Both datasets will be needed for the second day of the course.
For the third and final day of the course we will be using an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) called PyCharm. This is a powerful Python development tool which has a free version available for Educational and Academic use. Download and install it from here: https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/download/.