Install Donkeycar on Mac

donkey

Setup your donkey conda env with:

conda create -n donkey python=3.11
conda activate donkey

Now there are two different installations possible. Very likely you will want to do the user install. Then you will perform Step User install. In case you want to debug or edit the source code, you will need to do the more advanced Developer install. But you can do only one.

Note: Only do User install or Developer install but not both!

User install

As you have activated the new donkey env already you simply type:

pip install donkeycar[pc]

If you are using ZSH (which is default on MacOS) you need to escape [ and ] and hence you would rather type:

pip install donkeycar\[pc\]

If you are using an Intel Mac or you type (read above how to change this if you are using ZSH):

pip install donkeycar[macos]

if you are on Apple Silicon. This will install the latest release.

Developer install

Here you can choose which branch or tag you want to install, and you can edit and/or debug the code, by downloading the source code from GitHub.

Install git 64 bit and change to a dir you would like to use as the head of your projects.

mkdir projects
cd projects
git clone https://github.com/autorope/donkeycar
cd donkeycar
git checkout main
pip install -e .[pc]

Note: if you are using ZSH (you'll know if you are), you won't be able to run pip install -e .[pc]. You'll need to escape the brackets and run pip install -e .\[pc\].

Further steps

  • If this is not your first install, update Conda and remove old donkey
conda update -n base -c defaults conda
conda env remove -n donkey
  • Tensorflow GPU

Currently, there is no NVidia gpu support for tensorflow on mac.

  • Create your local working dir:
donkey createcar --path ~/mycar

Note: After closing the Terminal, when you open it again, you will need to type conda activate donkey to re-enable the mappings to donkey specific Python libraries


Next let's install software on Donkeycar