name: setting up a development environment description: Set up a development environment for writing and testing code.

Setting Up a Development Environment

Use a reproducible, project-local environment and install NiMARE in editable mode so code changes are immediately available when running tests or examples.

Creating or reusing an environment

• Prefer a local virtual environment (e.g., .venv) in the repository root; reuse it if it already exists.

• Use a supported Python version (>=3.10) consistent with docs/installation.rst.

• If no .venv exists, create and activate one:

  python3 -m venv .venv
  source .venv/bin/activate
  

• When installing dependencies, try uv pip install ... first to keep installs fast and deterministic.

• If uv is unavailable or fails, fall back to .venv/bin/python -m pip install ....

Installing NiMARE for development

• Install NiMARE in editable mode with all extras so tests and docs can run:

  uv pip install -e .[all]
  

• If that fails or uv is not installed, use:

  .venv/bin/python -m pip install -e .[all]
  

• Confirm the environment by importing NiMARE and running a small command, for example:

  python -c "import nimare; print(nimare.__version__)"