.. _Installation:

Installation
============

EstimationPy provides functionalities for estimating state variables
and parameters of dynamic system represented as Functional Mockup Units (FMU).
An FMU is a simulation model that is compliant with the FMI standard.
FMUs can be generated by tools such as Dymola, Matlab or EnergyPlus.
The FMU is a wrapper around a simulation software that exposes a
standardize C API. The details of the C API are specified by the
FMI standard. Please, visit http://www.fmi-standard.org for more
information about the standard and which tools support it.

EstimationPy relies on the Python package `PyFMI <http://www.pyfmi.org>`_
for simulating the FMUs. PyFMI itself has multiple dependencies
that need to be satisfied in order to be used.
PyFMI can be either installed as a standalone package, or can be
installed as part of the more comprehensive set of packages provided
by `JModelica <http://www.jmodelica.org>`_.

EstimationPy also relies on `Pandas <http://pandas.pydata.org>`_ to work
with timeseries data.

EstimationPy within Docker
++++++++++++++++++++++++++

What is Docker?!
Docker is an open platform for building, shipping and running distributed
applications. It gives programmers, development teams and operations engineers
the common toolbox they need to take advantage of the distributed and
networked nature of modern applications.

With Docker you can create an environment (i.e., a virtual machine) in which
using EstimationPy from either a Mac, Linux or Windows.

For more information about docker visit the website https://docker.com .

The **EstimationPy** repository contains a folder called ``dockers`` that includes all
the elements to build a Docker image and running a Docker container
with installed **EstimationPy** and all its dependencies.

If you're interested in how you to manually install all the depencencies
and setting up a linux environmentin ready for working with **EstimationPy**
I suggest you to look ad the Dockerfile contained in the folder ``dockers``.