Development tools

To develop a model for Chap, you work in the terminal, get code from GitHub and install packages for your model. If these are new to you, work through the guides below in order. Each one ends with an exercise to check that it works.

1. Working on the terminal: open a terminal, move between folders and run commands. On Windows, this includes setting up WSL.
2. Git and GitHub: download code from GitHub and share your own.
3. Virtual environments: install the packages a project needs, with uv for Python and renv for R, without breaking other projects.

You also need an editor for your code. RStudio is common for R, and VS Code works for both R and Python.

Docker packages a program with everything it needs, so that it runs the same on any machine. You do not need it to develop or evaluate a model, only to deploy one next to a Chap installation.

When you are comfortable with these, continue with Set up your machine.