Install Atom on MacOS

Introduction

Atom is one of many text editors that allow you to write and edit simple text files without additional font formatting (e.g. scripts).

Atom has access to a large choice of packages that provide additional functionality. For instance, we will use a package to edit files remotely on the CGAT cluster.

Install Atom

• Go to the Atom website: https://atom.io/.
• Click on the ‘Download’ button.

This should download a file atom-mac.zip on your computer.

• Uncompress this file (e.g., double-click it).

This should generate a file Atom in the same folder.

• Move this file to your Applications folder (e.g., drag and drop it to the Applications link, which should be present in the section Favourites of the sidebar in your Finder window).

Note: You can also find detailed instructions on the Atom website.

Launch Atom

The Atom application should now be present in your Launchpad.

• Click the Atom application in your Launchpad.

This should launch the application.

Configure tabulation width

For the course, we will set the width of tabulation to 4 white spaces.

• Launch Atom (as detailed above)
• In Atom, go to the ‘Settings’ pane.

It might open automatically as a tab in the editor window when you launch Atom, but if not you can open it by navigating the Atom menu to Atom > Preferences...

• In the Atom Settings pane, on the left, click on the tab called Editor, scroll down, and tick the checkbox ‘Soft Tabs’.
• Scroll down to ‘Tab length’ and set this value to 4.

Install additional Atom packages

For the course, we will use a number of packages that facilitate our work both locally and on the remote cluster.

• ftp-remote-edit: edit files on a remote server (e.g. CGAT server).
• platformio-IDE-terminal: run a terminal within the Atom window.
• teletype: collaborate on the same file simultaneously.
• script: run Python scripts in Atom
• python-debugger: debug Python code.
• python-autopep8: format Python code following PEP8 standards.
• ide-python: check syntax and auto-complete Python code.

For each of the above packages:

• In Atom, navigate to the ‘Settings’ pane.
• In the Atom Settings pane, on the left, click on the tab called ‘Install’.
• At the top, in the search bar, type (or copy paste) the name of the package.

This should short list packages that match the value in the search bar

Note: Be careful to select the correct package, as many packages have very similar names.

• Click on the ‘Install’ button next to the correct package.

You can confirm that the package was installed successfully, if the ‘Install’ button was replaced by the three buttons ‘Settings’, ‘Uninstall’, and ‘Disable’.