Requirements

We will assume for this workshop that you are using a Linux PC: either a laptop or a remote machine that you can connect to using SSH. Ideally you will use your own laptop or connect to a system at your home institution: that way you will be able to continue using the same environment after the course. The software we will be using is available for Windows and Mac OSX too: you are welcome to run it on any OS you like, but we cannot offer much help during the sessions to get it working.

If you bring your own laptop and use it to connect to a remote machine, you will need to have an SSH client installed, and will also need to set up and export an X windows session so that you can run graphical programs (ROOT and probably a text editor) on the remote machine.

The room we are using is equipped with Windows PCs running the Desktop@UCL environment, which has the necessary client software installed.

Whichever system you use for the actual exercises will need the following software installed:

• Git (version control system)
• Python 2.5+, but not version 3 (programming language and interpreter)
• ROOT (C++ data analysis toolkit) including the PyROOT Python interface.
• Nose Python testing toolkit
• a text editor of your choice

Ideally you should also have:

• IPython
• a GitHub account: you can sign up for free, and doing so in advance will save time during the course

Testing your environment

Check that you can run ROOT by typing

root

and verifying that you see the ROOT splash screen and then a ROOT prompt

root [0]

Check that you can start IPython and import the required modules:

[waugh@goshawk ~]$ ipython 
Python 2.7.3 (default, Aug  9 2012, 17:23:57) 
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

IPython 1.0.0 -- An enhanced Interactive Python.
?         -> Introduction and overview of IPython's features.
%quickref -> Quick reference.
help      -> Python's own help system.
object?   -> Details about 'object', use 'object??' for extra details.

In [1]: from ROOT import TFile

In [2]: from nose import tools

or at least that you can do this using the default Python interpreter

[waugh@goshawk ~]$ python
Python 2.7.3 (default, Aug  9 2012, 17:23:57) 
[GCC 4.7.1 20120720 (Red Hat 4.7.1-5)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> from ROOT import TFile
>>> from nose import tools

If you get any errors when typing the import statements, then you do not have the required modules installed, or your environment is not set up correctly to find them.

Examples

LXPlus

If you have an LXPlus account, all the required software is installed and accessible by default.

UCL HEP cluster

Updated versions being installed...

Fedora Linux

On Fedora 18, and other recent versions, all the packages needed are available in the default repository and can be installed using yum install or via the GUI by following Applications Menu -> Administration -> Add/Remove Software. The packages you will need are

• git
• python
• python-nose
• root and other associated packages including root-python
• python-ipython