AE2235-I-installation

This guide will help you install the control and PyDSTool Python packages using pip instead of Anaconda.

Table of contents

• Method 1: The quick way
  • Prerequisites
  • Installation
  • Usage
• Method 2: The thorough way

Method 1: The quick way

This method is intended to be quick and easy to follow, at the expense of explanations accompanying the instructions. Note that this method is Windows-specific.

Prerequisites

Before beginning you will need:

• A functional installation of Python 3.9
• A functional installation of Python 3.10

By "functional installation", I mean that you should be able to see something like the following when you run py -0p in a terminal:

C:\> py -0p
 -V:3.11 *        C:\Program Files\Python311\python.exe
 -V:3.10          C:\Program Files\Python310\python.exe
 -V:3.9           C:\Program Files\Python39\python.exe
 -V:3.8           C:\Program Files\Python38\python.exe
 -V:3.7           C:\Program Files\Python37\python.exe

You most likely will not have all the versions, but you do need 3.9 and 3.10. If they don't appear, either:

• You have them installed but Python can't find them because they aren't on your system PATH. Edit your PATH accordingly. For the example locations listed above, this would be adding C:\Program Files\Python310\ and C:\Program Files\Python310\Scripts\ for Python 3.10, and similar entries for 3.9.
• You don't have them installed, in which case you can download the installers (Python 3.9.13 and Python 3.10.11). Ensure that during the installation you tick Add Python to PATH, and ensure that you enable tcl/tk and IDLE.

Ensure that py -0p lists 3.9 and 3.10 before proceeding.

Installation

1. Download the scripts setup_39.bat and setup_310.bat. Find a folder where you would like to keep your Python installations for this course. Create two folders within it, 39 and 310. Move setup_39.bat to 39 and setup_310 to 310. Within each folder, create a subfolder called wheels.
2. Go to https://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/ and download the following files. Ensure that you get the exact filenames below. I would recommend using Ctrl+F to find the right files.
   • For 3.9:
     • numpy‑1.22.4+mkl‑cp39‑cp39‑win_amd64.whl
     • SciPy‑1.8.1‑cp39‑cp39‑win_amd64.whl
     • slycot‑0.4.0‑cp39‑cp39‑win_amd64.whl
   • For 3.10:
     • numpy‑1.22.4+mkl‑cp310‑cp310‑win_amd64.whl
     • SciPy‑1.8.1‑cp310‑cp310‑win_amd64.whl
     • slycot‑0.4.0‑cp310‑cp310‑win_amd64.whl
3. Move the 3.9 wheels into 39\wheels\ and the 3.10 wheels into 310\wheels\.
4. Run or double click setup_39.bat which will create a new virtual environment and install the appropriate packages into it. Similarly, run setup_310.bat to do the same for 3.10. If any problems occur during the installation, an error message will be raised specifying what went wrong.

Usage

Open 39 as a folder within VS Code, and select the Python interpreter located at .\venv\scripts\python.exe. The same goes for 310.

Use the 39 installation for any code that requires PyDSTool (i.e., the fridge example). Use 3.10 for all other code.

Ensure that the virtual environments are properly activated when launching VS Code, and that you are not using the default Code Runner Python executor python -u.

Method 2: The thorough way

TODO: write.