Installation

Install with pip

In an activated Python environment, install the published release with:

python -m pip install aestimo

This command installs the package currently available on PyPI. The GUI and launch commands in this guide belong to the upcoming 4.0.0 release. Until 4.0.0 is published, use the source installation below for that workflow.

Check the installed package and its dependencies with:

python -m pip show aestimo
python -m pip check

Create a Python environment

The 4.0.0 source requires Python 3.9 or newer. Installation and CLI checks cover Python 3.9, 3.12 and 3.13 on Linux, and Python 3.12 on Windows. These checks import the GUI without opening a window; other Python/platform combinations have not all been verified.

Create a virtual environment before installing:

python -m venv .venv

Activate it on Linux/macOS:

source .venv/bin/activate

On Windows PowerShell:

.venv\Scripts\Activate.ps1

Install the 4.0.0 source

Install the integrated source from the main Aestimo repository:

python -m pip install --upgrade pip
python -m pip install "git+https://github.com/aestimosolver/aestimo.git@master"

This command requires Git. Alternatively, download and extract the repository, then run python -m pip install . from its root. Use a commit SHA instead of master in the Git URL when you need a reproducible installation.

Installation creates aestimo and aestimo-gui commands in the active environment. No manual addition of the source directory to PATH is needed.

Using an existing conda installation

You can use conda instead of venv. With conda already installed:

conda create --name aes python=3.12 pip
conda activate aes
python -m pip install .

Run the last command from a downloaded or cloned source checkout. The active Python’s pip installs Aestimo’s declared dependencies. pylab is not a separate required package, and no manual chmod or site-packages path edits are needed.

Desktop requirements

The GUI needs Tk and a graphical desktop in addition to its Python dependencies. Check Tk with python -m tkinter. If Tk is missing on Debian/Ubuntu, install the system package python3-tk for your Python installation. Python distributions on other platforms may provide Tk through their own installers.

For command-line calculations on a machine without a display, use a non-interactive Matplotlib backend, for example MPLBACKEND=Agg on Linux.

Installed examples

The wheel includes JSON GUI presets and their reference CSV files. The GUI copies missing resources to ~/Aestimo/examples on first launch and preserves existing user files. Set AESTIMO_WORKSPACE to choose a different workspace root:

export AESTIMO_WORKSPACE="$HOME/my-aestimo-work"
aestimo-gui

The examples directory will be $AESTIMO_WORKSPACE/examples. In a source checkout, the GUI uses the checkout’s existing examples/ directory instead. Python input scripts and historical notebooks are available in the repository; they are not all distributed as installed GUI presets.