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)
• setuptools (for installing Python packages on Windows)
• Sphinx (for building the documentation)
• nose (for running unit tests)
• PIL (required by the unit tests)
• lxml (required by the unit tests)

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

Windows

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.

setuptools

Windows installer files for setuptools are available here. Be sure to choose the installer that matches the version of Python you have installed.

setuptools includes the easy_install script, which will be used to install some of the other prerequisite packages.

Sphinx

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

> easy_install Sphinx

nose

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

> easy_install nose

PIL

Windows installer files for PIL are available here. Be sure to choose the installer that matches the version of Python you have installed.

lxml

Windows installer files for lxml are available here. Be sure to choose the installer that matches the version of Python you have installed.

Linux/*BSD

make

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

Sphinx

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

PIL

PIL is available in Debian, Ubuntu, openSUSE, Mandriva and Fedora in the package python-imaging, in FreeBSD and NetBSD in the package graphics/py-imaging, and in OpenBSD in the package graphics/py-Imaging.

lxml

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