For our tutorials we recommend that you download and install the latest release of RevBayes (Höhna et al. 2016), which is available for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux operating systems. Directions for downloading and installing the software are available on the program webpage: http://revbayes.com. The exercises provided often also require additional programs for editing text files and visualizing output. The following are very useful tools for working with RevBayes:
A good text editor – if you do not already have one that you like, we recommend one that has features for syntax coloring, easy navigation between different files, line numbers, etc. Good options include Sublime Text, Atom or NotePad++, which are available for Mac OSX, Windows, and Linux.
Tracer – for visualizing and assessing numerical parameter samples from RevBayes
FigTree – a tree visualization program
Some of the output can be automatically visualized using pre-made R functions provided by our R-package RevGadgets. You should make sure that you have a recent release of R and RevGadgets installed.
IcyTree – a web-hosted phylogenetic tree visualization tool that is supported for Firefox or Google Chrome browsers