Setting Up a Development Environment

Use a reproducible, project-local environment and install NiMARE in editable mode so code changes are immediately available when running tests or examples.

Creating or reusing an environment

• Prefer a local virtual environment (e.g., .venv) in the repository root; reuse it if it already exists.
• Use a supported Python version (>=3.10) consistent with docs/installation.rst.
• If no .venv exists, create and activate one:

``bash python3 -m venv .venv source .venv/bin/activate ``

• When installing dependencies, try uv pip install ... first to keep installs fast and deterministic.
• If uv is unavailable or fails, fall back to .venv/bin/python -m pip install ....

Installing NiMARE for development

• Install NiMARE in editable mode with all extras so tests and docs can run:

``bash uv pip install -e .[all] ``

• If that fails or uv is not installed, use:

``bash .venv/bin/python -m pip install -e .[all] ``

• Confirm the environment by importing NiMARE and running a small command, for example:

``bash python -c "import nimare; print(nimare.version)" ``