Ecoinformatics

A course for undergraduates covering computational approaches in macroecology

Creative Commons License

Computer Setup

R

Download and install the R base system. We recommend you use R studio to work with the base system.

Git

Windows

  1. Download the Git for Windows installer.
  2. Run the installer and follow the steps bellow:
    1. Click on “Next”.
    2. Click on “Next”.
    3. Click on “Next”.
    4. Click on “Next”.
    5. Click on “Next”.
    6. Select “Use Git from the Windows Command Prompt” and click on “Next”. If you forgot to do this programs that you need for the workshop will not work properly. If this happens rerun the installer and select the appropriate option.
    7. Click on “Next”. Keep “Checkout Windows-style, commit Unix-style line endings” selected.
    8. Select “Use Windows’ default console window” and click on “Next”.
    9. Click on “Next”.
    10. Click on “Finish”.

Mac OS X

  1. Open up the Terminal, type in “git” and press enter.
  2. This should cause a pop-up window to appear. It will have several options; click on “Install” (not “Get Xcode”, see “Installing Xcode” for that).
  3. Click “Agree”.
  4. When the install is finished, click “Done”.
  5. To make sure this worked, type in “git” in the Terminal and press enter. Some information will come up, including a list of common commands.

If this doesn’t work you can try the following:

For OS X 10.9 and higher, install Git for Mac by downloading and running the most recent “mavericks” installer from this list. After installing Git, there will not be anything in your /Applications folder, as Git is a command line program. For older versions of OS X (10.5-10.8) use the most recent available installer labelled “snow-leopard” available here

Installing Xcode

  1. Open up the Terminal, type “xcode-select –install” and press Enter
  2. Click “Install” on the pop-up window
  3. Click Agree when the License Agreement appears

Linux

Git is probably already installed. If it is not already available on your machine you can try to install it via your distro’s package manager. For Debian/Ubuntu run sudo apt-get install git and for Fedora run sudo yum install git.

Configure Git

Once Git is installed, you should configure your email and user name to track your version history.

  1. Open up the Terminal or command line window (in Windows you can use Git bash)
  2. Type and replace “Your name” and your.email@domain.com from the following lines:
git config --global user.name "Your Name"
git config --global user.email your.email@domain.com