Our two-day boot camp will introduce you to the Unix shell, version control, Python programming, and databases. In order to do the hands-on exercises, you will need these four tools:
If you are using Linux or Mac OS X, you already have the Bash shell: just open a terminal window and start typing. If you are using Windows, please go to http://cygwin.com/install.html, download setup.exe, and run it. This will give you a basic set of tools, which includes the Bash shell; you can run the shell by double-clicking the Cygwin icon that the installer places on your desktop.
To see if you have the other three tools, try typing the following commands in your shell/terminal window one after another. Do NOT type the dollar sign '$' --- that's the shell's way of signaling that it's ready to accept commands. The output from each command on my Windows 7 machine using Cygwin is underneath the command; you should see something similar (but not necessarily identical) on your machine.
EasyMercurial (http://easyhg.org) follow the instructions on the download page there, check that it starts up without errors.
$ which svn
/usr/bin/svn
$ which python
/usr/bin/python
$ which sqlite3
/usr/bin/sqlite3
If the shell responds to any of these commands by saying “not found” (or something equivalent), you may have the tool installed, but under a different name. Try the following for Python:
$ which python2.7
$ which python.exe
and the following for SQLite (notice that it doesn't have the '3' at the end):
$ which sqlite
If any of these tools are missing, don't panic. We will help you get them installed over lunch on the first day (before they're needed). If you have any questions, please give me a shout at gvwilson@third-bit.com.