Developer Setup for Windows (32-bit)

• Make sure to download 32 bit packages!

• The instructions below make use of the python distribution from python.org. We are in the process of assessing a move to anaconda as the preferred developer distribution. If you want to try that out, see [AnacondaSetup?].

Install Python

• Install python 2.7 from ​http://www.python.org/download/releases/
  

• If you have two or more versions of python then you will have to make sure you use the correct version of python when installing packages and running python. You can check this on the command terminal by entering

python --version

• If the correct version isn't displayed then it's probably not set as an environmental variable. These can be changed in My Computer ‣ Properties ‣ Advanced ‣ Environment Variables The directory where python is located should be entered under 'PATH' and 'PYTHONPATH'.

• If this doesn't work then a temporary fix is setting the path on the command line. An example of this is below.

  PATH c:/Python25; %PATH%
  

Install wxPython 3.0

• Get wxPython 3.0 from ​http://www.wxpython.org/download.php#stable

Install other external packages

• There are several external packages that need to be installed. A complete up to date list can be found here

• Some packages don't come in a friendly .exe file. To install these you will have to use the command terminal. There are two examples below of how to install. (The example installs periodictable using Python 2.7).

— Example 1 (Using correct version of Python)

c:\>python --version
Python 2.7

c:\>cd C:\Users\rqh12525\Desktop\Periodic table\periodictable-1.3.0

C:\Users\rqh12525\Desktop\Periodic table\periodictable-1.3.0>python setup.py install

— Example 2 (Forcing to install using the correct version of Python)

c:\>cd C:\Users\rqh12525\Desktop\Periodic table\periodictable-1.3.0

C:\Users\rqh12525\Desktop\Periodic table\periodictable-1.3.0>c:/Python27/python.exe setup.py install

Get the source code

• To obtain the source code you need to have git running. if you haven't already got it, it can be obtained from ​github.

• Using git clone type the following onto the command line will allow you to checkout the code and put it into the directory 'c:/sasview'

  c:\>git clone https://github.com/SasView/sasview.git C:\sasview
  

• Alternatively one can install git with a GUI. A good one can be obtained from ​tortoise.

Build SasView

• Now that the files are downloaded it's time to build. Go to where you downloaded SasView and look for a file called 'run.py' which we shall use to build SasView. Use the code below on the command line in order to build SasView. Note that run.py will run setup.py build as needed but will only compile all the C if there have been changes to the C code. Setup.py docs should be run after SasView has been built. This will run Sphinx to run the documentation

c:\sasview>python run.py
C:\sasview>python setup.py docs

• Note: You may get an error saying "Error: Python was built with Visual Studio 2003; extensions must be built with a compiler that can generate compatible binaries". To solve this issue we recommend using Cygwin and to compile with MinGW32. The best thing about this is that you don't have to actually use Cygwin. First go to the download page of MinGW and download the latest version. ​https://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw/files/ (Making sure it's 32-bit or 64 bit compatible depending on your setup). Next make sure the PATH variable is set to the folder containing the MinGW32 GCC. (Usually found in 'C:\MinGW\bin'). Next enter the following into the command terminal.

c:\sasview>python setup.py build -c mingw32

Install SasView

• Installing is straight forward. Use a similar approach to building SasView by using the code below.

c:\sasview\trunk>python setup.py install --user

• Note: If you get an error message saying it is Unable to find vcvarsall.bat then see the solution on ​Stackoverflow. In particular, you may want to create or edit distutils.cfg located at C:\Python26\Lib\distutils\distutils.cfg to contain:

  [build]
  compiler=mingw32
  

Run SasView

• Use the following command to run SasView. (Make sure you are in the directory where sasview.py is located).

c:\sasview\trunk\sansview>python sansview.py

• Note: If you get a similar error to the one below then make sure the PATH's contain where to find the modules. This is usually the trunk folder in C:\sasview.

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "sansview.py", line 27, in <module>
from sans.guiframe import gui_manager
ImportError: No module named sans.guiframe

• Done!

Building the Help Docs

The process for building the help docs has been steadily evolving. The latest instructions might be found here