Python Polars: The Definitive Guide

Chapter 2. Getting Started

To explore all the exciting features Polars has to offer, you’ll need to get it up and running first.

In this chapter, you’ll:

• Set up your working environment

• Install all the necessary dependencies for following along with the examples in this book into a virtual environment using uv

• Learn how to start and use JupyterLab, the environment in which you’ll be running the code examples in this book

• Learn how to install Polars and its optional dependencies for your own projects

• Learn how to configure Polars to your liking

• See how to compile Polars from source, and what to do in edge cases where you’re working with very large datasets or older processors

It’s recommended that you follow along with the code examples in this book. Learning new packages tends to stick much better when you’re playing around with what you’ve learned, as opposed to just reading about the possibilities.

Setting Up Your Environment

To follow along in this book, you will need to set up an environment. We will first download the project files. After that we will install uv, the tool required to get up and running. uv is an extremely fast Python package and project manager written in Rust. Using uv you’ll install the project dependencies needed to follow along with the examples in the book.

Downloading the Project

It’s possible to download the project files in two ways. The first way is by installing Git. The second is by downloading the project files as a ZIP file.