4. Development

The main GitHub repository for the project can be found at:

Anyone is more than welcome to open tickets to discuss bugs, new features, or just to ask usage questions (I find this useful for gauging what questions ought to feature in the FAQ, for example).

Even if you don’t feel up to hacking on the code, I’d love to hear suggestions from people of what you’d like the API to look like (even if the code itself isn’t particularly pythonic, the interface should be)!

4.1. Development installation

If you wish to develop colorzero itself, it is easiest to obtain the source by cloning the GitHub repository and then use the “develop” target of the Makefile which will install the package as a link to the cloned repository allowing in-place development (it also builds a tags file for use with vim/emacs with Exuberant’s ctags utility). The following example demonstrates this method within a virtual Python environment:

$ sudo apt install lsb-release build-essential git git-core \
    exuberant-ctags virtualenvwrapper python-virtualenv python3-virtualenv
$ cd
$ mkvirtualenv -p /usr/bin/python3 colorzero
$ workon colorzero
(colorzero) $ git clone https://github.com/waveform80/colorzero.git
(colorzero) $ cd colorzero
(colorzero) $ make develop

To pull the latest changes from git into your clone and update your installation:

$ workon colorzero
(colorzero) $ cd ~/colorzero
(colorzero) $ git pull
(colorzero) $ make develop

To remove your installation, destroy the sandbox and the clone:

(colorzero) $ deactivate
$ rmvirtualenv colorzero
$ rm -fr ~/colorzero

4.2. Building the docs

If you wish to build the docs, you’ll need a few more dependencies. Inkscape is used for conversion of SVGs to other formats, Graphviz is used for rendering certain charts, and TeX Live is required for building PDF output. The following command should install all required dependencies:

$ sudo apt install texlive-latex-recommended texlive-latex-extra \
    texlive-fonts-recommended graphviz inkscape

Once these are installed, you can use the “doc” target to build the documentation:

$ workon colorzero
(colorzero) $ cd ~/colorzero
(colorzero) $ make doc

The HTML output is written to build/html while the PDF output goes to build/latex.

4.3. Test suite

If you wish to run the colorzero test suite, follow the instructions in Development installation above and then make the “test” target within the sandbox:

$ workon colorzero
(colorzero) $ cd ~/colorzero
(colorzero) $ make test