Getting Started with LTB

Table of Contents

Installation
Hands-on Tutorial
Usage
Related Topics

This page provides a quick start guide for new users to get started with LTB. Each project has its own documentation, where more details about installation and example usage can be found.

Installation

Operating System

LTB and its subprojects are designed to be cross-platform and are compatible with Windows, macOS, and Linux. Note that Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) can be easier to use on Windows.

Environment Configuration

If you are new to Python and want to get started quickly, you can use Mambaforge, which is a conda-like package manager configured with conda-forge.

First, install Mambaforge.

Download the latest Mambaforge for your platform from conda-forge/miniforge. Most users will use x86_64(amd64) for Intel and AMD processors. Mac users with Apple Silicon should use arm64(Apple Silicon) for best performance.

Next, complete the Mambaforge installation on your system. If you are using Anaconda or Miniconda on Windows, you should open Anaconda Prompt instead of Miniforge Prompt.

Second, create an environment for LTB.

Open Terminal (on Linux or macOS) or Miniforge Prompt (on Windows, not cmd!!). Make sure you are in a conda environment - you should see (base) prepended to the command-line prompt, such as (base) C:\Users\username>.

Create an environment for LTB (recommended), you can change the environment name and python version <3.8> to desired ones.

mamba create --name ltb python=3.8

Activate the new environment with

mamba activate ltb

You will need to activate the andes environment every time in a new Miniforge Prompt or shell. If you have completed these steps without error, you now have a working Python environment. See the commands at the top for Getting started.

Package Installation

There are two modes of installation: development and release.

Release Mode

Regular releases are available on distribution channels such as PyPI and conda-forge. They can be installed with pip or conda.

mamba install -c conda-forge andes

Note that AMS and AGVis has not been deployed to PyPI and conda-forge with continuous integration and deployment yet. They need to be installed from source code.

Development Mode

For model development purpose, you may want to install the latest version and play with the source code.

Develop Install discusses how to install ANDES in development mode. It is also applicable to AMS and AGVis.

Hands-on Tutorial

It is recommended to go through ANDES Examples and AMS Examples to get started with LTB.

Usage

Jupyter Notebook

Jupyter notebooks allow interactive execution of code snippets, and is recommended for new users to get started with LTB. Jupyter notebook examples are available in the source code repository. They can be downloaded and run locally as getting started examples. Jupyter sometimes needs to be installed separately.