Installing Album

Album can be installed in two different ways:

Automated installation with Album installation wizard:

You can install Album by simply downloading the installation wizard for your operating system and executing it.

The installation wizards will create a new directory called .album inside your home directory. Into this directory the installer installs Micromamba version 1.0.0 and creates the Album environment for you. On your Desktop you will find a link called Album which will start the Album graphical user interface.

Windows disclaimer: On some windows systems, especially virtual maschines, the installer will trigger a request for admin rights. This is because the installer of micromamba needs to edit the powershell profile. The installer will only edit the profile of the current user and not the system profile. The installer will not install anything on your system without your permission. If you deny the request for admin rights the installer will install album in a GUI only mode. This means that you can only use Album in the graphical user interface and not in the commandline/powershell since they cannot be initialised without admin rights.

Manually activating the environment for commandline usage

To activate the Album environment for commandline use one of the following commands:

micromamba activate -p ~/.album/envs/album

Uninstallation

To uninstall everything, simply delete the .album directory in your home directory.

Manual Installation:

Installation using conda:

Prerequisites:

Install the Album environment:

For the most recently released Album version, run this command:

conda env create -n album album python=3.10 -c conda-forge

Activate the environment:

conda activate album

Installation using micromamba:

Prerequisites:

Install the Album environment:

For the most recently released Album version, run this command:

micromamba env create -n album album python=3.10 -c conda-forge

Activate the environment:

micromamba activate album

Windows notes

If after installing Anaconda, the Conda command is not found. Use the Anaconda Command Prompt or add these to the PATH variable of your system:

  • C:\Users\USERNAME\Anaconda-dir\condabin

  • C:\Users\USERNAME\Anaconda-dir\Scripts

  • C:\Users\USERNAME\Anaconda-dir\Library\bin

Conda vs mamba

Album is working with conda and mamba, which are both open source package and environment management systems. The main difference is, that mamba is faster than conda and can in some cases resolve environments which conda cannot. If you want to use mamba you can install mamba in the base environment and then create the Album environment with mamba, or you can use the micromamba installer to avoid conda all together.

Conda using mamba

If you are already using conda and want to profit mamba, you can install mamba in the base environment and use it to create environments. Conda can then still be used to activate the environments.

conda install mamba -c conda-forge