Installation and dependencies

Here you can find basic instructions for the installation of IMAGINE. There are two main installation routes:

  1. one can pull and run a Docker installation which allows you to setup and run IMAGINE by typing only two lines. IMAGINE will run in a container, i.e. separate from your system.
  2. one can download and install IMAGINE and all the dependencies alongside your system.

The first option is particularly useful when one is a newcomer, interested experimenting or when one is deploying IMAGINE in a cloud service or multiple machines.

The second option is better if one wants to use ones pre-installed tools and packages, or if one is interested in running on a computing cluster (running docker images in some typical cluster settings may be difficult or impossible).

Let us know if you face major difficulties.

Docker installation

This is a very convenient and fast way of deploying IMAGINE. You must first pull the image of one of IMAGINE’s versions from GitHub, for example, the latest (development) version can be pulled using:

sudo docker pull docker.pkg.github.com/imagine-consortium/imagine/imagine:latest

If you would like to start working (or testing IMAGINE) immediately, a jupyter-lab session can be launched using:

sudo docker run -i -t -p 8888:8888 docker.pkg.github.com/imagine-consortium/imagine/imagine:latest /bin/bash -c "source ~/jupyterlab.bash"

After running this, you may copy and paste the link with a token to a browser, which will allow you to access the jupyter-lab session. From there you may, for instance, navigate to the imagine/tutorials directory.

Standard installation

Download

A copy of IMAGINE source can be downloaded from its main GitHub repository. If one does not intend to contribute to the development, one should download and unpack the latest release:

wget https://github.com/IMAGINE-Consortium/imagine/archive/v2.0.0-alpha.3.tar.gz
tar -xvvzf v2.0.0-alpha.3.tar.gz

Alternatively, if one is interested in getting involved with the development, we recommend cloning the git repository

git clone git@github.com:IMAGINE-Consortium/imagine.git

Setting up the environment with conda

IMAGINE depends on a number of different python packages. The easiest way of setting up your environment is using the conda package manager. This allows one to setup a dedicated, contained, python environment in the user area.

Conda is the package manager of the Anaconda Python distribution, which by default comes with a large number of packages frequently used in data science and scientific computing, as well as a GUI installer and other tools.

A lighter, recommended, alternative is the Miniconda distribution, which allows one to use the conda commands to install only what is actually needed.

Once one has installed (mini)conda, one can download and install the IMAGINE environment in the following way:

conda env create --file=imagine_conda_env.yml
conda activate imagine
python -m ipykernel install --user --name imagine --display-name "Python (imagine)"

The (optional) last line creates a Jupyter kernel linked to the new conda environment (which is required, for example, for executing the tutorial Jupyter notebooks).

Whenever one wants to run an IMAGINE script, one has to first activate the associated environment with the command conda activate imagine. To leave this environment one can simply run conda deactivate

Hammurabi X

A key dependency of IMAGINE is the Hammurabi X code, a HEALPix-based numeric simulator for Galactic polarized emission (arXiv:1907.00207).

Before proceeding with the IMAGINE installation, it is necessary to install Hammurabi X following the instructions on its project wiki. Then, one needs to install the hampyx python wrapper:

conda activate imagine # if using conda
cd PATH_TO_HAMMURABI
pip install -e .

Installing

After downloading, setting up the environment and installing Hammurabi X, IMAGINE can finally be installed through:

conda activate imagine # if using conda
cd IMAGINE_PATH
pip install .

If one does not have admistrator/root privileges/permissions, one may instead want to use

pip install --user .

Also, if you are working on further developing or modifying IMAGINE for your own needs, you may wish to use the -e flag, to keep links to the source directory instead of copying the files,

pip install -e .