Introduction

Get the material¶

If you have not done so already, you can obtain the course material by clicking on the green “Code” button at the top of this page and then selecting “Download ZIP”. Alternatively, you can clone the repository using Git.

Environment setup¶

To be able to run the notebooks and exercises for the course, you will need to setup a Python environment including a series of packages. There are currently multiple solutions to do this. Here we describe two of them: pixi and conda. We recommend using pixi as it is a more modern and user-friendly tool that simplifies the management of Python environments. However, if you prefer using conda, you can also follow the instructions for conda blow.

Pixi¶

Pixi is a tool that allows you to create and manage Python environments in a simple and reproducible way. It is built on top of conda and pypi and uses a pixi.toml file to define the environment and its dependencies. The pixi.toml file is provided in this folder and it defines an environment called DSPy2026. You will need to first install pixi on your system by following these installation instructions. Once you have pixi installed, download the pixi.toml or the entire repository, navigate to the location of the pixi.toml file in the terminal and run the following command:

pixi install

This will create a pixi environment called DSPy2026 with all the necessary packages installed and activate it. Note that if you download the entire repository, you will also have the pixi.lock file which contains the exact versions of the packages that are installed in the environment. This ensures that you have the same environment as the one used for the course material and creating the environment will be faster.

You can then run the notebooks and exercises in this environment. To launch Jupyter Lab, run the following command:

pixi run jupyter lab

This will open Jupyter Lab in your default web browser and you can start working on the notebooks and exercises.

Conda¶

Conda remains the most used solution for creating environments. It comes in multiple flavors but we recommend using Miniforge which is a minimal installer for conda that includes only the packages from the conda-forge channel. Follow the installation instructions to install Miniforge on your system.

On Windows, you can download the installer and run it. After the installation you can get access to conda via a terminal, the Miniforge Prompt.

On macOS and Linux, installation happens via the terminal. Follow the instructions you see on the screen. Towards the end of the installation you will be asked whether you want to initialize conda. The default answer is no but you should answer yes. This will make sure that upon closing and reopening the terminal, conda will be available. If you accidentally answered no, you can run the following command to initialize conda:

~/miniforge3/bin/conda init

Create a conda environment¶

Now that you have conda installed you can create a conda environment. For this you can use the environment.yml file that is provided in this folder. Open a terminal (or the Miniforge Prompt on Windows) and navigate to the Day1 folder. If you don’t know the path, you can drag and drop the folder into the terminal which will give you the path. Once you are in the Day1 folder, run the following command:

conda env create -f environment.yml

This will create a conda environment called DSPy2026 with all the necessary packages installed. You can use the environment by running:

conda activate DSPy2026

In VSCode, you can also select the conda environment as the interpreter for your notebooks. Open the Command Palette (Cmd+Shift+P on macOS or Ctrl+Shift+P on Windows/Linux) and type “Python: Select Interpreter”. Then select the DSPy2026 environment from the list.