Jun 3 – 5, 2026
Brookhaven Center (Bldg. 30)
America/New_York timezone

Prerequisites

The Bash Shell

Bash is a commonly-used command line interpreter that gives you the power to do simple tasks more quickly.

Linux and MacOS 

A terminal with bash is available in Linux/MacOS by default. 

Windows

On Windows you can use GitBash or WSL:

  • Git Bash (https://git-scm.com/downloads), or
  • Use WSL to have a Linux system on Windows
    https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install 
  • And here is AlmaLinux9 (which is currently the most used distro in High Energy and Nuclear Physics)
    https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9p5rwlm70sn9?hl=en-us&gl=US 

Git

Git is a version control system that lets you track who made changes to what when and has options for easily updating a shared or public version of your code on github.com. You will need a supported web browser.

You will need an account at github.com for parts of the Git lesson. Basic GitHub accounts are free. We encourage you to create a GitHub account if you don't have one already. Please consider what personal information you'd like to reveal. For example, you may want to review these instructions for keeping your email address private provided at GitHub.

Python

Python is a popular language for research computing, and great for general-purpose programming as well. For this workshop, you will not need to install Python, as we will be using a Python distribution that runs entirely on your browser. A reasonably up-to-date browser among the supported ones is all you need.

After the training, we suggest using Miniforge/mamba (an alternative to Anaconda) to install Python, Jupyter lab, and any other packages that we used or dependencies that you might need.

Video Walk-through

If you prefer a video walk-through of the installation process, check the videos linked below. Please be aware that they were created for a previous event and the instructions may not be the most updated ones. 

LINUX - https://indico.cern.ch/event/1112526/attachments/2412398/4128317/Software%20Carpentry%20Prerequisites-Linux.mp4

MAC - https://indico.cern.ch/event/1112526/attachments/2412398/4128318/Software%20Carpentry%20Prerequisites-Mac.mp4

WINDOWS - https://indico.cern.ch/event/1112526/attachments/2412398/4128319/Software%20Carpentry%20Prerequisites-Windows.mp4