Installation¶
In this tutorial, you will learn how to install Simmate with Anaconda and start up a local server. Beginners will also be introduced to the command-line.
Danger
In this tutorial and others, beginners without coding experience should skip the quick-start tutorial section and jump straight to the full tutorial. The critical steps in each are exactly the same, but the full tutorial includes extra exploration of the software and how to use it.
Quick start¶
- Install anaconda
- Create a conda environment, install Simmate in it, and activate it. (note: Spyder is our recommended IDE but optional)
conda create -n my_env -c conda-forge python=3.11 simmate conda install -n my_env -c conda-forge spyder # optional but recommended conda activate my_env
- Run the
simmate --help
command to make sure it's installed correctly - For first-time setup, initialize your local database with
simmate database reset
- Run the command
simmate run-server
(and leave this command running) - Go to http://127.0.0.1:8000/ and you'll see you local server!
Note, this server is only accessible on your local computer. For a production-ready server, see our website documentation.
Note
Simmate itself is <2MB, but when installed to a clean conda environment, the entire download for all it's dependencies comes to ~1.2GB. Additional disk space is also needed for optional downloads -- such as third-party data.
Speed-up your installation¶
Faster Conda¶
While it is the recommended way to install Simmate, conda can be extremely slow. It can take >20 minutes to solve the environment on some systems because of Simmate's many large dependencies.
We therefore suggest experienced users try the following:
- set
conda config --set channel_priority strict
- use the libmamba solver
Mamba¶
Instead of Anaconda, you could just use Mamba from the start. In fact, our team uses micromamba for our CI, so this is well tested.
mamba create -n my_env -c conda-forge python=3.10 simmate
Pip¶
Pip is the default package installer for python, but be warned that it can cause problems for beginners (especially those on Windows PCs):
pip install simmate
Danger
Pip should only be used as an absolute last resort for installing Simmate. Do this only if you are an advanced python user and understand how to manage your python env's effectively.