Setting up Development Environment#

Getting started with DataLab development is easy.

Here is what you will need:

An integrated development environment (IDE) for Python. We recommend Spyder or Visual Studio Code, but any IDE will do.
A Python distribution. We recommend WinPython, on Windows, or Anaconda, on Linux or Mac. But, again, any Python distribution will do.
A clean project structure (see below).
Test data (see below).
Environment variables (see below).
Third-party software (see below).

Development Environment#

If you are using Spyder, thank you for supporting the scientific open-source Python community!

If you are using Visual Studio Code, that’s also an excellent choice (for other reasons). We recommend installing the following extensions:

Extension	Description
gettext	Gettext syntax highlighting
Pylance	Python language server
Python	Python extension
reStructuredText Syntax highlighting	reStructuredText syntax highlighting
Ruff	Extremely fast Python linter and code formatter
Todo Tree	Todo tree
Insert GUID	Insert GUID
XML Tools	XML Tools

Python Environment#

Sigima requires the following :

Python (e.g. WinPython)
Additional Python packages

Installing all required packages :

pip install --upgrade -r requirements.txt

If you are using WinPython, thank you for supporting the scientific open-source Python community!

The following table lists the currently officially used Python distributions:

Python version	Status	WinPython version
3.9	OK	3.9.10.0
3.10	OK	3.10.11.1
3.11	OK	3.11.5.0
3.12	OK	3.12.3.0
3.13	OK	3.13.2.0

⚠ We strongly recommend using the .dot versions of WinPython which are lightweight and can be customized to your needs (using pip install -r requirements.txt).

✅ We also recommend using a dedicated WinPython instance for Sigima.

Test data#

Sigima test data are located in different folders, depending on their nature or origin.

Required data for unit tests are located in “sigima\data\tests” (public data).

A second folder %SIGIMA_DATA% (optional) may be defined for additional tests which are still under development (or for confidential data).

Specific environment variables#

Visual Studio Code configuration used in launch.json and/or tasks.json (examples) :

@REM Folder containing additional working test data
set SIGIMA_DATA=C:\Dev\Projets\SIGIMA_data

Visual Studio Code .env file:

This file is used to set environment variables for the application.
It is used to set the PYTHONPATH environment variable to the root of the project.
This is required to be able to import the project modules from within VS Code.
To create this file, copy the .env.template file to .env (and eventually add your own paths).

Third-party Software#

The following software may be required for maintaining the project:

Software	Description
gettext	Translations
Git	Version control system
ImageMagick	Image manipulation utilities