Working Environment

Vicente González Ruiz - Departamento de Informática - UAL

November 3, 2024

Contents

 1 Visual Coding Framework (VCF) Project
 2 Recommended Working Environments
  2.1 Using your Operating System
  2.2 Using a Container
  2.3 Using a Virtual Machine
 3 Programming environment
 4 About the Software Versions System
 5 Basic usage of VCF
 6 References

1 Visual Coding Framework (VCF) Project

VCF [2] is a Python [1] application that implements a collection of algorithms used in image and video compression. VCF is hosted at GitHub and developed by the students of Sistemas Multimedia.

2 Recommended Working Environments

2.1 Using your Operating System

VCF modules should run on any machine with a Python interpreter installed. Said that, it is recommended to use Linux or a UNIX-based OS such as OSX. However, with some configuration effort (for example, after installing Python), VCF should run also in Windows.

Running VCF natively is the preferred solution. Recall that in Windows there exists the possibility of using the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).

2.2 Using a Container

The second most convinient option in terms of computational requirements and speed is to run Linux in a container, such as the provided by Docker (example for Ubuntu) or LXD. Notice, however, that you will need to run graphical applications (such as ImageMagick and Firefox) in your container.

2.3 Using a Virtual Machine

VCF works also in any Linux installed in a virtual machine (VM) environment such as Virtual Box, VMware and Parallels. The only drawback of this option is that you will require some extra memory and CPU power, compared to the previous solutions.

In this category also fall cloud notebook services, such as Google Colaboratory, Binder, and Kaggle, that allow to install Python packages and run shell scripts.

3 Programming environment

The most convenient way of developping a Python application is using a Python environment:

python3 -m venv SM
source SM/bin/activate # In Linux and OSX
# SM\Scripts\activate.bat # In Windows using cmd.exe
# SM\\Scripts\Activate.ps1 # In Windows using PowerShell

4 About the Software Versions System

VCF is hosted by GitHub and Git [3] in the associated software version system.

5 Basic usage of VCF

See the VFC’s README.md file.

6 References

[1]   The Python Foundation. The Python Website.

[2]   V. González-Ruiz. Visual Coding Framework.

[3]   V. González-Ruiz. Using GitHub.