Workstations

We attempt to maintain a uniform computing environment across all our PCs. This is important because it prevents a situation where some code can only be edited by certain users or on certain machines. It can be challenging because of different machine vintages, software versions, etc.

The standard set-up instructions and procedures described on this page help make our computing environments less vulnerable to these problems. The responsibilities of participants in the computer-building process can be summarized by:

1. Stanford IT personnel sets up paid software listed on our build sheet.
2. The user executes our scripted build of free software on a machine that satisfies Homebrew's system requirements
3. The user checks that Stanford utility software, as outlined on build sheet, has been correctly installed. The user also checks that Python 2 and Git can be run from the command line, and that We have installed Xcode and agreed to its license (we may check this by running sudo xcodebuild -license).
4. If the user is working on a project that requires software not included in our general software build, the user should follow any project-specific instructions (usually in a repository README or wiki) on installing this software.
5. The user creates a GitHub account with two-factor authentication and adds a proper SSH key to her GitHub account.

We design our code to run on all our machines. Any changes to the standard build should be reflected in the scripts and documents listed above. Project-specific machine settings should be maintained in the appropriate README.