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TipTop Installation Tutorial

TipTop was designed from the ground up to be easily installed and used.

Getting Started​

Get started by installing TipTop. Follow these simple steps to get up and running quickly.

What you'll need​

Before you begin, make sure you have the following installed:

  • Python (version 3.11 or higher)

We recommend using conda for managing your environment.

Using conda​

  1. Open your terminal or command prompt.
  2. Create a new conda environment named tiptop with Python 3.11 or higher by running the following command:
conda create --name tiptop python=3.11
  1. Activate the environment:
conda activate tiptop

Using venv - Python​

  1. Open your terminal or command prompt.
  2. Create a new virtual environment named tiptop:
python -m venv tiptop

or

python3 -m venv tiptop
  1. Activate your virtual environment:
# Unix
source ./tiptop/bin/activate

or

# Windows PowerShell
.\tiptop\Scripts\activate

Note: We only support Python >= 3.11.

Step 2: (Optional) Install GPU Support​

If you have a GPU and want to take advantage of hardware acceleration: install CuPy.
Run this command to install CuPy in your conda environment:

conda install -c conda-forge cupy

Step 3: Install Dependencies​

All other dependencies should be installed automatically, whether you choose to install TipTop via pip or by downloading the repository directly (see next step).

If you need a more sophisticated user interface than a command prompt, you can use any IDE that supports iPython or the Python command prompt. Here are some IDEs the team has tested:

  • Jupyter and JupyterLab (many files are Jupyter Notebooks):

Install Jupyter and JupyterLab:

conda install jupyter
conda install -c conda-forge jupyterlab

If you don’t wish to use the provided Jupyter Notebooks, you can convert them using the jupyter library:

jupyter nbconvert --to python targetNotebook.ipynb
  • Spyder (another popular option):
conda install spyder
  • Vs Code: To use VS Code, simply install the Python extension for VS Code, which supports iPython and the Python command prompt.
    Install VS Code here: VS Code Download

Step 4: Install TipTop​

After the environment is set up and activated, there are two main ways to install TipTop:

Install from PyPi​

To install the latest release of TipTop with its dependencies, run:

pip install astro-tiptop

Install from Git Repository​

  1. Clone the repository:
git clone https://github.com/astro-tiptop/TIPTOP.git
  1. Navigate to the folder where you cloned TipTop and install it (remove --user to install for all users):
pip install -e --user .

Step 5: (Optionnal) Development Setup​

If you plan to do your own development or fix bugs, you will need to download and install the following libraries:

Now you're ready to explore TipTop!​