Prerequisites

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Export environment variables

To avoid having to hardcode any paths in configuration files, tutorials, etc., you must export three environment variables:

• PLATO_PROJECT_HOME: refer to the directory in which PlatoSim3 was installed.

• PLATO_WORKDIR: refer to your working directory were you should store your own configuration files and save your simulations (preferably not within the PlatoSim installation directory).

• PYTHONPATH: refer to the directory in which our Python scripts can be found.

Before exporting any environment variables, first make sure to activate your Conda environment. If you have installed PlatoSim as a user (via Conda), the home location of the PlatoSim project needs to be exported as:

export PLATO_PROJECT_HOME=$CONDA_PREFIX

On the other hand, if you installed PlatoSim as a developer (from Source), this environment variable needs to be exported as:

export PLATO_PROJECT_HOME=<full/path/to/PlatoSim3>

Next, choose a PlatoSim working directory and export the two following environment variables (which are independent on if you are a user or a developer):

export PLATO_WORKDIR=<full/path/to/working/directory>
export PYTHONPATH=$PYTHONPATH:$PLATO_PROJECT_HOME/python

Lastly, check that the exported paths are set to the proper locations with:

echo $PLATO_PROJECT_HOME
echo $PLATO_WORKDIR
echo $PYTHONPATH

We recommend that you place these three environment variables in a .bash_profile script that can be read by your system at all times.

Note

You should now be able to run PlatoSim from the command line:

platosim -h

and from a Python shell:

import platosim

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File storage

To avoid problems when updating the PlatoSim software, it is best to store your own input and output files in a designated working directory. We recommend to use the path environment PLATO_WORKDIR as described above.

For all users that want to run PlatoSim from the terminal, we recommend that you copy the inputfile.yaml file (located within the directory $PLATO_PROJECT_HOME/inputfiles) and modify the copy rather than the original file. Note that you can always download the inputfile.yaml directly from GitHub (from the branch matching your installation).

Warning

For users: that installs a new version of PlatoSim in an existing Conda environment, all changes will be overwritten, and any files you may have added will be removed from the intallation directory. Hence, better store your files outside of the installation directory.

For developers: having downloaded the source code, should only make changes or add/remove files from the PlatoSim3/inputfiles directory (or any other directory) if a pull request is the end goal.