Before we can get started we need to install our development environment, and you need to sign up for a GitHub account if you don’t have one already. You’ll need Racket 7.8 for programming and Git for version control.

GitHub Registration

You need to have a GitHub account. If you don’t already have one then you should sign up here. You might want to do it while files are downloading (below).

Windows Setup

You will need to download:

Installing Git

Run the Git installer. Click “Next” for each question until “Adjusting your PATH environment” appears. Select “Use Git from the Windows Command Prompt” instead of the default option. Then continue clicking “Next” until the installation completes.

To test that Git is installed properly, open a command prompt, type the command git version and press return. Git should reply with version information:

C:\Users\jesse> git version
git version 2.20.1.windows.1
C:\Users\jesse>

Installing Racket

Download and Install Racket. Then make sure you can run DrRacket.

Mac OS Setup

Enabling Git

Mac OS automatically installs its toolchain, including Git, when you attempt to use it from the command line for the first time.

Thus, to install Git, run the Terminal program (from /Applications/Utilities or /System/Applications/Utilities) to get a command prompt. At the prompt, type git version and press return. If you haven’t used the command-line developer tools before then a dialog box will pop up and offer to install them for you. Say yes.

Once you have Git set up, you should run the command again. The result should look like this (but possibly with different names and Git version):

[mannequin:~] tov$ git version
git version 2.21.0 (Apple Git-122)
[mannequin:~] tov$

If it prints git: Command not found. then you may have a problem. You can try installing the latest version of Command Line Tools for XCode manually from Apple, or install XCode from the App Store.)

Installing Racket via Homebrew

We are going to install Racket via Homebrew, a Mac OS package manager that we’ll use to install other software that we need later in the course.

To install Homebrew, (re)open the terminal and run the command below (from ruby to the end of the line):

[mannequin:~] tov$ ruby <(curl -fsSL https://bit.ly/1LEgSWs)
==› This script will install:
/usr/local/bin/brew
/usr/local/share/doc/homebrew
⋮
- Run `brew help` to get started
- Further documentation: 
    https://docs.brew.sh
[mannequin:~] tov$

Then use Homebrew to install Racket:

[mannequin:~] tov$ brew cask install racket
Updating Homebrew...
==› Auto-updated Homebrew!
⋮
🍺  racket was successfully installed!
[mannequin:~] tov$

Make sure you can run DrRacket, which should be installed as /Applications/Racket v7.8/DrRacket.app.

Linux, etc.

Make sure you have a recent Git.

Install Racket 7.8 either via your preferred package manager or from the Racket website.