Developer Installation Instructions

If you intend to modify the Landlab code base, including design of new components, you will want to install Landlab directly from the source code. This way, when you modify the code, the changes you have made will be reflected immediately in your Landlab library. This section provides information on how to do this.

Installation Steps and Resources

• Create of Fork of Landlab
  • Getting the code from Github
• Install Landlab from Source
  • Before You Begin
  • Install
  • Conda Environment Tips
  • Uninstall
• Verify that Landlab is Working with Tests
  • Testing Your Installation
• Keep Landlab Updated
  • Additional issues
• Troubleshoot Installation and Development Challenges
  • I updated my working version and now it is broken. What do I do?
  • What do I do if my pull request cannot be automatically merged?
  • I’m seeing errors about Cython when I try to run my code/import Landlab. It used to be fine.
  • I see errors about Cython when I try to install Landlab
  • I’m still confused
• Installing compilers for building Landlab on a Windows machine
  • Getting the compilers

Note: For dev work, we actively recommend Anaconda over the Enthought Python Distribution, especially on Windows machines. This is because it ships with a working compiler already associated with Python, whereas the EPD does not. On a Mac, this is less important as the Xcode app (available through iTunes) gives you the necessary compilers instead—install it now if you don’t have it! If you choose to use the EPD on a Windows machine, however, you’ll need to install separately either Visual Basic or MinGW and successfully associate them with your Python install. See this page on Windows Compilers.

Make a GitHub Issue to contact the development team if you’re really struggling. But unless you’re really invested in Canopy and the EPD, uninstalling it and replacing with Anaconda is probably the more stress-free way to go.*

Either way, you’ll need a working C++ compiler running alongside Python to be able to perform a full developer install. You’ll see errors referring to Cython if you don’t have working compiler when calling pip install -e . (see the developer install instructions ).

Working with your local version of Landlab

Obviously, feel free to just dive into modifying the code, but your life in the future will be a bit easier if you follow some basic recommendations for good work flow with git forks and branches. Even if you have a working knowledge of using git in a collaborative project, we highly recommend that you review this section of the documentation to get a sense of how to track modifications to your version of Landlab in a way that makes it easy to (a) get updates to Landlab made by the development team and other contributors and (b) contribute improvements and new features you develop back to the community.

For information about our in-house code formatting conventions and standards, see here.