Installation Guide

This guide will walk you through setting up a Python virtual environment with the necessary dependencies installed.

Environment Setup

Setting up your environment is done in three steps: installing native dependencies, cloning the pntOS-Python Exercises project, and setting up your Python environment.

Install Native Dependencies

Please ensure you have the following packages installed and available on your system:

Package

Reason Needed

Python 3.10 or later

Needed to run Apps

Git

Needed to acquire dependencies

Glib2

Needed for LCM tools, to run Apps

Tkinter

Needed for plotting filter results

Ubuntu 22.04 users can use the following command to install the above packages:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install python3 python3-venv git libglib2.0-dev python3-tk

Users of other operating systems will need to install the above packages using their operating system’s package manager.

Cloning pntOS-Python Exercises

Next, download the pntOS-Python Exercises project onto your machine. While there are several approaches to do so, we suggest you clone the pntOS-Python Exercises Git repository using:

git clone https://github.com/is4s/pntOS-Python-Exercises.git

Then switch your current working directory to the directory you just created with:

cd pntOS-Python-Exercises

Finally, you are now ready to set up your Python environment in the next section.

Python Environment Setup

This project supports two workflows:

  • pip: the traditional Python package manager.

  • uv: a modern, faster, all-in-one alternative to pip.

If you are new to Python development, it is recommended that you use the pip workflow. Choose your preferred approach below:

We will begin by creating and entering a clean Python virtual environment (venv). We can create the virtual environment in the .venv folder by running the following command in the project root directory:

python3 -m venv .venv --prompt pntos-python-exercises

Next, enter the virtual environment. The steps to do this vary depending on your shell:

source .venv/bin/activate

source .venv/bin/activate.fish

Your shell should now be inside the virtual environment. It is recommended that you upgrade your pip to the latest: 
pip install --upgrade pip

Now we’re ready to install the dependencies. In the project root directory, run:

pip install -v -r requirements.txt

Note

This command may take a while to run. It is downloading example data, which may take a lot of bandwidth.

First, ensure you have uv installed. If you don’t have it yet, you can install it by following the instructions at https://docs.astral.sh/uv/getting-started/installation/.

Create a virtual environment using uv in the project root directory and import python dependencies in one step:

uv sync

Note

This command may take a while to run. It is downloading example data, which may take a lot of bandwidth.

Next, enter the virtual environment:

source .venv/bin/activate

source .venv/bin/activate.fish

Next Steps

Assuming the above was successful, you are ready to continue. If you came here from the main menu’s set up instructions, you can return now.