QIIME Installation Guide

QIIME Installation Guide

Installing QIIME on Mac OS X and Linux using Miniconda

QIIME consists of native Python 2 code and additionally wraps many external applications. These instructions describe how to perform a base installation of QIIME using Miniconda.

Step 1: Install Miniconda

Miniconda is a Python distribution, package manager, and virtual environment solution. While QIIME 1 is Python 2 software, we recommend installing Miniconda with Python 3 (miniconda3), as many bioinformatics packages are now transitioning to Python 3. You can still install Python 2 software with miniconda3 by passing the python=2.7 flag when you create a new environment; otherwise the default Python version will be Python 3.

Begin by downloading Miniconda and following the associated installation instructions.

You should next work through the tutorials on the Miniconda install page linked above. We recommend setting up a QIIME 1.9.1 environment for your Miniconda installation, so pay particular attention to the virtual environment management in this tutorial. This will eventually allow you to install QIIME 2 alongside QIIME 1 on your system. It will also facilitate easy installation of the many other bioinformatics tools supported by bioconda.

You’ll primarily interact with Miniconda using the conda command.

Step 2: Create your qiime1 environment and install QIIME

conda create -n qiime1 python=2.7 qiime matplotlib=1.4.3 mock nose -c bioconda

Step 3: Activate your qiime1 environment and test your QIIME installation

source activate qiime1
print_qiime_config.py -t

Using QIIME after installation with Miniconda

Anytime you want to use QIIME after installation with Miniconda, you’ll need to reactivate your qiime1 environment using this command:

source activate qiime1

To exit the virtual environment, simply run the deactivate command:

source deactivate

If you decide later that you don’t want the environment or its packages anymore, deactivate the environment and then run this command:

conda remove --name qiime1 --all

These instructions have been tested on Mac OS X (10.8–10.11) and Linux (Ubuntu 14.04 and Mint 17.3 Rosa).