Getting started

Install¶

matbii is avaliable as a pypi package and can be installed with pip (recommended):

pip install matbii

or can easily be installed from source (for the latest pre-release updates):

git clone https://github.com/dicelab-rhul/matbii.git
pip install ./matbii

Note

It is always a good idea to use the latest version of icua to get the latest fixes and features, update with:

pip install -U icua

Run¶

Run with default configuration:

python -m matbii

Errors on Windows

You might encounter the following error when running for the first time:

ERROR: 'star-ray-pygame' requires a cairo installation which may not be installed automatically on some systems.
Cause:
    no library called "cairo-2" was found
    no library called "cairo" was found
    no library called "libcairo-2" was found
    cannot load library 'libcairo.so.2': error 0x7e.  Additionally, ctypes.util.find_library() did not manage to locate a library called 'libcairo.so.2'
    cannot load library 'libcairo.2.dylib': error 0x7e.  Additionally, ctypes.util.find_library() did not manage to locate a library called 'libcairo.2.dylib'
    cannot load library 'libcairo-2.dll': error 0x7e.  Additionally, ctypes.util.find_library() did not manage to locate a library called 'libcairo-2.dll'

ACTION REQUIRED: Please ensure the required binaries are installed and accessible via your PATH environment variable.
    >> On Windows: Install the latest GTK-3 runtime from: https://github.com/tschoonj/GTK-for-Windows-Runtime-Environment-Installer/releases, use the default install path!
    >> See 'star-ray-pygame' README for more information: https://github.com/dicelab-rhul/star-ray-pygame.

To remedy: install the latest GTK-3 runtime. Make sure to use the default install directory so that matbii can find the installation.

Default entry point¶

The default entry point for matbii (python -m matbii <OPTIONS> which will use matbii.main.py) is highly configurable and a good place to start. A full list of command line arguments is given below. The most important option is -c which specifies a path to a configuration file (details on next page).

Command line arguments¶

Option	Description
`-c CONFIG`, `--config CONFIG`	Path to configuration file.
`-x EXAMPLE`, `--example EXAMPLE`	Name of the example to run - see `matbii.example` or examples for a full list.
`-s SCRIPT`, `--script SCRIPT`	Name of the script to run - see `matbii.extras.scripts`

The most important option is --config which specifies a path to a configuration file (details on next page).

Custom entry points (advanced)

Some experiments may require more advanced setups and you may wish to define your own entry point. The __main__.py file should serve as inspiration for this. For more details see the documentation for advanced users. It is recommended to read on to see what is offered by default before attempting to build you own entry point.