Installing the Kegbot package

The two major software components of a Kegbot system are included in the Kegbot package: the core program, which runs and monitors your hardware, and the web frontend. Both can be easily installed in a few minutes.

You can select from one of a few ways to install:

• Automatically, using easy_install, the recommended way to quickly get going with the latest release.
• From a source release, which also contains the Kegboard controller code and documentation.
• Using Mercurial, to grab the latest, bleed-edge development code from version control.

If in doubt, proceed to the next section for the easiest method.

Install automatically, with pip/easy_install (recommended)

The latest Kegbot package is available in the Python Package Index. The package name is Kegbot. Follow these steps to install Kegbot, and all of its Python dependencies, using the Python package installer.

Note

The instructions below use a tool called pip, which replaces a similar tool called easy_install. If your system does not have pip, you can substitute easy_install, which supports the same commands.

1. If you don’t already have it, install pip on your system:

   % sudo apt-get install python-pip

2. Use pip to install the kegbot package:

   % sudo pip install kegbot

3. You should now have the Kegbot python modules installed, and a handful of command line tools which use them. Confirm everything was installed by attempting to use one of the tools:

   % kegbot_admin.py
   Type 'kegbot_admin.py help' for usage.

Easy, right? We hope so! You’re now ready to skip to Setup & Configure Kegbot.

Install from a source release

You can also install Kegbot directly from a source release.

1. Find the source release on the downloads page.

2. Unpack the the source release:

   % tar -zxf kegbot-0.6.0.tgz

3. Install using setup.py:

   % cd kegbot-0.6.0/
   % sudo ./setup.py install

4. You should now have the Kegbot python modules installed, and a handful of command line tools which use them. Confirm everything was installed by attempting to use one of the tools:

   % kegbot_admin.py
   Type 'kegbot_admin.py help' for usage.

Note

The instructions used setup.py to install the source system-wide, but you could instead perform a local install which does not need sudo. See Using virtualenv for details.

Easy enough, right? We hope so! You’re now ready to skip to Setup & Configure Kegbot.

Install from Mercurial (developers)

You can download the latest Kegbot code as source, using the Mercurial version control tool. (If you’re familiar with Subversion, Mercurial is pretty similar.)

1. If you don’t already have the hg program, start by installing it. On Ubuntu, use the following:

   % sudo apt-get install mercurial

2. Next, check out the kegbot sources using the hg command. (This example syncs to the latest revision tagged stableish):

   % hg clone -r stableish https://kegbot.googlecode.com/hg/ kegbot-hg

3. You should now have a complete working copy of the kegbot tree:

   % ls kegbot-hg
   common_settings.py.example  kegbot_master.cfg.example  Makefile     README.txt  src
   distribute_setup.py         LICENSE.txt                MANIFEST.in  setup.py

You may want to continue on to Using virtualenv, which is the recommended way to install and run kegbot without installing it system-wide.

Using virtualenv

The virtualenv tool is a handy and popular way to simulate a real source install, but without affecting the rest of your system. With the kegbot development sources or a source release, this allows you to install and use kegbot locally, as if it was installed on your system.

1. Install the virtualenv tool if you don’t already have it:

   % sudo apt-get install python-virtualenv

2. Use virtualenv to create a home for a fake installation of kegbot (in ~/kb/):

   % virtualenv ~/kb/
   New python executable in /home/kegbot/kb/bin/python
   Installing setuptools.............done.

3. Step in to the virtual environment with the activate script:

   % source ~/kb/bin/activate
   % which python
   /home/kegbot/kb/bin/python

4. From within your source tree, use setup.py to “install” kegbot into the virtualenv home. Two commands are shown: The develop command is similar to install, but installs in development mode – the installation will simply point to the source tree, so you can change the kegbot code without reinstalling. Run one of the following:

   # Full install (copies all kegbot source files).
   % ./setup.py install --prefix=$HOME/kb
   [...]
   
   # Development install (links to kegbot source files).
   % ./setup.py develop --prefix=$HOME/kb
   [...]

5. Confirm that the tools are now installed:

   % which kegbot_admin.py
   /home/kegbot/kb/bin/kegbot_admin.py
   
   % kegbot_admin.py
   Type 'kegbot_admin.py help' for usage.

When using virtualenv, remember to step into the environment (by running source ~/kb/bin/activate) before attempting to use any kegbot programs.