Previous Versions of the Installation Guide

Our installation guide is updated periodically to reflect changes in course content, and changes ways to install certain programs and packages.

Here are the links to previous versions of the Installation Guide:

  • 2017 edition, by Lachlan Deer, Adrian Etter, Julian Langer & Max Winkler
  • 2018 edition, by Ulrich Bergmann, Ursina Schaede, Dora Simon, Carlo Zanella & Christian Zuend
  • 2019 Foundations edition, by Lachlan Deer & Julian Langer
  • 2020 edition, by Ulrich Bergmann, Matteo Courthoud & Lachlan Deer
  • 2021 edition, by Lachlan Deer, Julian Langer, Lexi Schubert & Martin Stancsics
  • 2022 edition, by Lachlan Deer, Julian Langer & Martin Stancsics

Major Changes

v2023

  • Due to loss of admin rights on UZH issued machines, many installations weren't possible anymore, demanding many changes during installation
  • Switch to native Windows applications instead of WSL
  • Usage of winget for Windows
  • Alternative to homebrew on Mac

v2022

  • Switch from the Anaconda to Miniforge to have a leaner Python distribution
  • Use a separated conda environment for the course instead of the base environment
  • Switch from vcxsrv to GWSL as it's more user-friendly
  • Obtain Chromedriver through chromedriver_autoinstaller

v2021.0.1

  • Update package versions for all Operating Systems
  • Mac instructions using zsh rather than bash
  • WSL instructions compliant with WSL2
  • Uses Google Chrome and Chromedriver from WSL for webscraping via an xserver

v2020

  • Migrate from Cygwin to Windows Subsystem for Linux
  • Higher dependency on Homebrew to install packages for Mac
  • Emphasis on installation using terminal commands rather than graphical installers to enhance reproducibility
  • Remove GIS guide
  • Split's installation instructions of R, RStudio and additional R packaged into separate versions

2019 Foundations edition

  • Focus only on R, terminal, Git and snakemake