Development

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

The project is currently in its early stages, but is quite useable and the documentation, while incomplete, should be useful to both users and developers wishing to hack on the project itself. The test suite is also nearing full coverage.

Development installation

If you wish to develop structa, 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. The following example demonstrates this method within a virtual Python environment:

$ sudo apt install build-essential git virtualenvwrapper

After installing virtualenvwrapper you’ll need to restart your shell before commands like mkvirtualenv will operate correctly. Once you’ve restarted your shell, continue:

$ cd
$ mkvirtualenv -p /usr/bin/python3 structa
$ workon structa
(structa) $ git clone https://github.com/waveform80/structa.git
(structa) $ cd structa
(structa) $ make develop

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

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

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

(structa) $ deactivate
$ rmvirtualenv structa
$ rm -rf ~/structa

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 texlive-xetex graphviz inkscape \
    python3-sphinx python3-sphinx-rtd-theme latexmk xindy

Once these are installed, you can use the “doc” target to build the documentation in all supported formats (HTML, ePub, and PDF):

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

However, the easiest way to develop the documentation is with the “preview” target which will build the HTML version of the docs, and start a web-server to preview the output. The web-server will then watch for source changes (in both the documentation source, and the application’s source) and rebuild the HTML automatically as required:

$ workon structa
(structa) $ cd ~/structa
(structa) $ make preview

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

Test suite

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

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

The test suite is also setup for usage with the tox utility, in which case it will attempt to execute the test suite with all supported versions of Python. If you are developing under Ubuntu you may wish to look into the Dead Snakes PPA in order to install old/new versions of Python; the tox setup should work with the version of tox shipped with Ubuntu Focal, but more features (like parallel test execution) are available with later versions.

For example, to execute the test suite under tox, skipping interpreter versions which are not installed:

$ tox -s

To execute the test suite under all installed interpreter versions in parallel, using as many parallel tasks as there are CPUs, then displaying a combined report of coverage from all environments:

$ tox -p auto -s
$ coverage combine .coverage.py*
$ coverage report