Prerequisites

Before engaging in developer-type activities with SkoolKit (e.g. building the documentation from source, or running the unit tests), you will need to install some extra software:

  • make (for building the documentation on Linux/*BSD)
  • distribute and pip (for installing Python packages on Windows)
  • Sphinx (for building the documentation)
  • nose (for running unit tests)

Details on how to install this software depending on your platform are given in the following sections.

Windows

Python version

The recommended version of Python to use in Windows is 2.7; Sphinx and nose may not work in Python 3.x.

Path environment variable

It’s a good idea to add the Python Scripts directory to the Path environment variable, so that any scripts or other executables installed there can be run from anywhere by just typing their name at the command prompt. The Scripts directory can be found at C:\Python2X\Scripts (assuming you have Python 2.X installed in C:\Python2X).

On most versions of Windows, you can change Path by right-clicking ‘My Computer’, choosing ‘Properties’, selecting the ‘Advanced’ tab, and then clicking the ‘Environment Variables’ button. Path will be in the ‘System Variables’ section. You will need to exit and restart the command prompt for the change to take effect. Remember to add a ; after the last item on Path before adding C:\Python2X\Scripts to it.

distribute

Download distribute_setup.py from python-distribute.org and run it using the Python interpreter:

> C:\Python2X\python distribute_setup.py

This will download and install distribute. distribute includes the easy_install script, which can be used to install pip:

> easy_install pip

Sphinx

To install Sphinx, open a command prompt and run the following command:

> pip install Sphinx

nose

To install nose, open a command prompt and run the following command:

> pip install nose

Linux/*BSD

make

make is available in Debian, Ubuntu, openSUSE and Fedora in the package make, and will already be installed on FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD systems.

Sphinx

Sphinx is available in Debian, Ubuntu and Fedora in the package python-sphinx, in openSUSE in the package python-Sphinx, and in FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD in the package textproc/py-sphinx.

nose

nose is available in Debian, Ubuntu, openSUSE and Fedora in the package python-nose, and in FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD in the package devel/py-nose.