Create a Development Environment

There are a number of different ways to create a suitable environment for Stylist development. A few are documented here.

Whichever method you choose you will need to install certain packages. The ultimate arbiter of what is needed is the setup.cfg file.

You will definitely need fparser and will probably want pytest, flake8 and mypy.

Using a Virtual Environment

Python supports cloning itself into stand alone instances at only the cost of all your disc space. Creating one of these instances is as easy as:

python3 -m venv ~me/place/which/i/like

This can be performed using any version of Python you may have temporarily enabled using, for instance, environment modules. After the new virtual instance is created those modules should be unloaded to avoid potential confusion.

Once created a virtual instance is “activated”:

source ~me/place/which/i/like/bin/activate

This sets everything up and modifies your command-line prompt to give a reminder of which environment you are using. Once you are finished you can get rid of it all with:

deactivate

Populating the Environment

With the virtual instance active you can use the “pip” tool to install anything you like from “pypi”. These new libraries will not interact with any installed in any other virtual environments you may have created.

e.g. python3 -m pip install pytest