First-time setup¶

Tip

If you are a student or teacher, we recommend using your Github account with Github's free Student/Teacher packages. This includes Github Pro and many other softwares that you may find useful. This is optional.

Fork the Simmate repo to your Github profile (e.g. yourname/simmate)
Clone yourname/simmate to your local desktop. To do this, we recommend using GitKraken and cloning to a folder named ~/Documents/github/. Note, Gitkraken is free for public repos (which includes Simmate), but also available with Github's free Student/Teacher packages. Their 6 minute beginner video will get you started.
Navigate to where you cloned the Simmate repo:
```
cd ~/Documents/github/simmate
```
Create your conda env using our conda file. Note, this will install Spyder for you and name your new environment simmate_dev. We highly recommend you use Spyder as your IDE so that you have the same overall setup as the rest of the team.
```
conda env update -f envs/conda/dev.yaml
conda install -n simmate_dev -c conda-forge spyder -y
conda activate simmate_dev
```
Install Simmate in developmental mode to your simmate_dev env.
```
pip install -e .
```
When resetting your database, make sure you do NOT use the prebuilt database. Pre-builts are only made for new releases and the dev database may differ from the most recent release.
```
simmate database reset --confirm-delete --no-use-prebuilt
```

Make sure everything works properly by running our tests

# you can optionally run tests in parallel 
# with a command such as "pytest -n 4"
pytest

In GitKraken, make sure you have the main branch of your repo (yourname/simmate) checked out.
In Spyder, go Projects > New Project.... Check existing directory, select your ~/Documents/github/simmate directory, and then create your Project!
You can now explore the source code and add/edit files! Move to the next section on how to format, test, and submit these changes to our team.