software for the module

[martinjrobins]

I'm going to build an image for the students laptops, so we need to collate a list of required software, at the moment I have:

• Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS
• Python (Ubuntu 20.04.1 comes with 3.8 as standard, is this sufficient?)
• python pip (sudo apt install -y python3-pip)
• python venv (python3-venv)
• build-essential and python3 dev libraries just in case (sudo apt install build-essential python3-dev)
• VSCode via snap (sudo snap install --classic code). Anyone have any opinions on snap versus apt for VScode?
• Git (sudo apt install git)

Anything else?

[fcooper8472]

This sounds fine to me. Re snap vs apt, I'm personally a snap fan as you get updates much more frequently. The only annoyance I've found is that snap keeps (by default) 3(!) versions of each package. This is controlled by a refresh.retain variable.

Won't matter much for vs code, but as soon as you start installing a few big packages it wastes a lot of disk space. You can configure it to keep 2 instead of 3 (but not 1...):

$ sudo snap set system refresh.retain=2

[jag1g13]

For the packaging lesson, one of the aims was 'how to install packages with conda', so we'll either need Anaconda installed, or to make that a theoretical exercise. Since you're not actually expecting many of them to use conda, maybe there isn't much harm in just doing that theoretically.

RE Snap: I've had problems in the past with VSCode in Flatpak (RedHat's equivalent) not being able to access required system libraries due to the sandboxing. I'm not sure how sandboxy Snap is, so that concern might not even be applicable. If you've tested it and it's not having issues with file access, I'd be happy with either method.

[fcooper8472]

RE Snap: I've had problems in the past with VSCode in Flatpak (RedHat's equivalent) not being able to access required system libraries due to the sandboxing. I'm not sure how sandboxy Snap is, so that concern might not even be applicable. If you've tested it and it's not having issues with file access, I'd be happy with either method.

I've been using VS Code via snap for a long time and have not experienced any problems.

[fcooper8472]

On the topic of VS Code: worth pre-installing certain plugins?

[jag1g13]

I think the Python plugin installs itself by default when you open a .py file doesn't it?

None of the others that I currently have installed I think are 'essential'. Are there any in particular you're thinking of?

Git Graph (or similar) might be useful for visualising branched history perhaps

[fcooper8472]

A few things that might be useful for everyone:

• python
• git (e.g. GitLens)
• live share (for remote help/collaboration)

[jag1g13]

Oh, Live Share is a good idea, that might be useful