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Advanced Installation

Welcome to BERA Tools! This guide will give you advanced installation options and configurations.

Prerequisites

  • Python 3.12 - 3.14
  • conda or pip

Installation Methods

Windows Installer

Download the standalone Windows installer from the latest BERA Tools release. Signing is currently off by default; maintainers can enable it per run according to the project Code signing policy.

Only installers attached to an official GitHub Release are intended for users. Artifacts from manual signing tests use a self-signed test certificate and must not be distributed.

When signing is skipped, the release includes beratools-installer-x.y.z-unsigned.exe and release notes identifying it as unsigned. These assets have no Authenticode signature, so Windows may display an unknown-publisher or SmartScreen warning. Prefer the signed installer when available.

Verify the Installer Signature

For a signed installer (without the -unsigned suffix), check its signature before running it on Windows:

  1. Right-click the installer and select Properties.
  2. Open the Digital Signatures tab.
  3. Select the SignPath Foundation signature and click Details.
  4. Confirm Windows reports This digital signature is OK.

You can also verify the installer with PowerShell:

Get-AuthenticodeSignature .\beratools-installer-x.y.z.exe |
    Format-List Status, StatusMessage, SignerCertificate, TimeStamperCertificate

For a signed release asset, Status must be Valid. Do not run an asset advertised as signed if its signature is missing or invalid. Explicitly labeled -unsigned.exe assets instead report NotSigned; they are not verified by SignPath.

Using conda

Have Miniconda installed on your system, then create an environment from the provided environment.yml:

conda env create -f environment.yml
conda activate bera

Using Pip

BERA Tools is published to Pypi and can be installed by pip. On Windows, if you use the standalone installer, GDAL/PROJ are bundled. For pip-based installs, GDAL should be installed first. Please refer to GDAL for Windows for more information.

Example: install GDAL from a Windows wheel (adjust the URL/version as needed):

pip install "gdal @ https://github.com/cgohlke/geospatial-wheels/releases/download/v2026.2.26/gdal-3.12.2-cp312-cp312-win_amd64.whl"

OSGeo4W is recommended for Windows, alongside conda.

pip install beratools

Verify Installation

After installation, verify that BERA Tools is installed correctly:

beratools

This will start the main GUI.

Install From Source

Developer Guide — Detailed instructions for installing from source, running tests, and contributing.

Update BERA Tools

Run the following commands to update BERA Tools.

conda update beratools

pip install --upgrade beratools

Remove BERA Tools

Remove BERA Tools from environment:

conda remove beratools

pip uninstall beratools

Remove whole conda environment:

conda activate  # go to base env
conda env remove -n bera