The Anaconda distribution of Python is a package manager for Python. It is very widely used and there are a number of resources available online for Mac OS X and Windows machines.
The Anaconda distribution is free to install and can be downloaded using:
https://www.anaconda.com/download/
The latest installer for your computer's operating system should be used. It will install Python version 3.7 as well as many other Python-based packages.
Based on your operating system, installation instructions are available online:
Note that if using Windows, it is recommended to select the option to add Anaconda to your PATH.
The adoption of Python 3, first released in 2008, was very slow, and many users still choose to use Python 2. In my opinion, this is the wrong choice. Python 3 has a lot of great, new features, and starting in 2019, many of the main Python packages will no longer support Python 2.
For windows users, the command-line emulator cmder is recommended. For Mac users, the built-in Terminal can be used or a replacement application like iTerm.
A new conda environment should be created and activated using the environment.yml file in this repository. From the command-line, run:
# create the environment
conda env create -f environment.yml
# make the environment active
source activate musa
For further information on the conda command, see
the conda user guide.