There's a little extra setup to get things working really smoothly on Windows.
See Installfest - do that first.
You need to have:
Open Git Bash and type python --version.
If you get something that looks like "Python 2.7.8", you're good. Go on to "pip"!
If you get a "sh.exe: python: command not found" error it's because Git Bash doesn't know about Python yet. We need to tell Windows where to find the Python program that will turn our Python scripts into machine code, so we give it a PATH, a list of folders it can look in.
Open Notepad and create a new file containing:
export PATH=/c/Python27:/c/Python27/Scripts:$PATH
(If you changed the default install directory for Python then change it here too.)
Save the file with the name .bashrc -- including the dot in front -- in your main user folder (mine is called 'Jennie' and located at C:\Users\Jennie).
Notepad will probably be super helpful and try to save it as .bashrc.txt, so let's fix that:
Open Git Bash and type in ls to list the files.
If you have loads of files this doesn't really help you much, so type ls .bashrc* to only list the files that start with .bashrc and end with anything (the * is a shortcut meaning 'match anything or nothing').
If you see .bashrc you're fine, if you see .bashrc.txt then you need to mv .bashrc.txt .bashrc to move the file to the right name. (Yep, in UNIX terminology "rename" is just a kind of "move".)
Close and restart Git Bash and try python --version again!
$ python --version
Python 2.7.8
(Pro tip: Whenever you see a $ like this in a code block, it means type the thing after the $ into Git Bash.)
Pip is an awesome package manager for Python and we'll be using it a lot. It makes it super easy to get off-the-shelf libraries and code to supercharge your applications. If you've used JavaScript libraries or Rails gems before, you'll appreciate having something similar for Python!
Download this file: get-pip.py and save it somewhere you can find it, like your user folder. Right-click and Save As will do the trick.
In Git Bash, type python get-pip.py to run the Python script and get pip.
If you saved it somewhere else, e.g. Downloads, you might change that command to python Downloads/get-pip.py.
Try the command pip once it's finished. It should Just Work, since it gets installed into C:\Python27\Scripts which you already added to your PATH earlier. Yay!
$ pip
....lots of stuff ending in...
--cert <path> Path to alternate CA bundle.
We will be installing virtualenv on Macs and Linux since it is a great way to manage your Python dependencies (the list of installed packages via pip) across projects. On Windows, this install is more tricky, but let's give it a shot.
In Git Bash, type
$ pip install virtualenv
and then
$ pip install virtualenvwrapper
Test it by making a new virtual environment:
$ mkvirtualenv hackbright
sh.exe": mkvirtualenv: command not found
Oh noes!
We have to jump through two more hoops to get this working (telling Windows where mkvirtualenv lives). Source
Download mktemp.exe - extract it from this ZIP (todo: link directly to exe) and put it in your C:\Program Files (x86)\Git\bin directory, or wherever your Git install is.
Add a few more lines to your .bashrc file, directly underneath the $PATH line above.
export MSYS_HOME='/c/Program Files (x86)\Git'
export WORKON_HOME=$HOME/.virtualenvs
if [ -e /c/Python27/Scripts/virtualenvwrapper.sh ]; then
source /c/Python27/Scripts/virtualenvwrapper.sh
fi
Restart Git Bash.
Try mkvirtualenv hackbright again, hopefully it should work now!
If it still doesn't, don't panic. We'll live without it. Especially if you got an error like "virtualenvwrapper could not create a temporary file name", this is tricky to fix and fortunately virtualenvwrapper is not required, it's just nice to have.