Building the extension package

Getting a complete package is not as easy as cloning or downloading the repository. You need to perform serveral steps to build a folder with all files for installing and the documentation.

WARNING: If you're using Windows, Cygwin is highly recommended!

Installing prerequisites

To build the package you need the following:

  • Python 2.7
  • Linux/UNIX command line or Cygwin (Windows) with CURL and GNU MAKE

The documentation is build with Sphinx and rst2pdf. Because rst2pdf is Python 2.x only and because we use >= Python 2.7 commands you need a Python 2.7 interpreter.

The best way to setup the Python environment is to setup a correct Python enviroment with all the required packages is to create a virtualenv.

1. Install virtualenv

If you don’t have virtualenv installed yet install it by using:

pip install virtualenv

Note: You need pip to install packages. Install pip by following this guide: Guide to install pip

2. Setup a virtualenv for building the Extension and documentation

  • First move to the location where you want to place the virtualenv. You can do this in the root of the project. The env/ directory is ignored by git.
  • Create the virtual environment virtualenv env
  • Activate the environment . env/Scripts/activate (Cygwin) or source env/bin/activate (Linux/Mac OSX)
  • Check if your virtualenv is activated. You should see (env) before your command input.
  • Install Sphinx and rst2pdf: pip install -r requirements.txt

Get the repository

You now need to download or git clone the respository. Move it to a location which you prefer to continue with.

Building the Extension

  1. Move into the extension’s folder root.
  2. Be sture that you have activated the virtual environment.
  3. Execute make build.
  4. See if the extension is build in the dist/ folder.