Install Lab
-----------

Lab supports Python 3.6+. We recommend installing Lab in a `Python
virtual environment <https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/venv.html>`_.
This has the advantage that there are no modifications to the
system-wide configuration, and that you can create multiple environments
with different Lab versions (e.g., for different papers) without
conflicts::

    # Install required packages, including virtualenv.
    sudo apt install python3 python3-venv

    # Create and activate a Python 3 virtual environment for Lab.
    python3 -m venv lab-venv  # or any other path instead of lab-venv
    source lab-venv/bin/activate

    # Install Lab in the virtual environment.
    pip install lab  # or a specific version with lab==x.y

If you want to install the latest development version and/or need to
change Lab itself, you can clone the Lab repo and install it in the
virtual environment::

    git clone https://github.com/aibasel/lab.git /path/to/lab
    pip install --editable /path/to/lab

The ``--editable`` flag installs the project in "editable mode", which
makes any changes under ``/path/to/lab`` appear immediately in the
installed package.

Please note that before running an experiment script you need to
activate the virtual environment with::

    source lab-venv/bin/activate

We recommend clearing the ``PYTHONPATH`` variable before activating the
virtual environment.
