To hack on Arkestrator, you will need some basic components installed on your system:

• A recent Python (we recommend 2.7)
• Virtualenv
• Pip
• A relational database supported by Django

On a Debian Wheezy system, for example, you should be able to get these things by running:

apt-get install python2.7 python-pip python-virtualenv

You will also need a database. SQLite 3 might still work, so perhaps you can get away with:

apt-get install sqlite3

We all use PostgreSQL because it is awesome. If you want to use PostgreSQL, in addition to the server and the client libraries, you'll need the development headers so that you can build Pyscopg2 inside your virtualenv later on:

apt-get install postgresql postgresql-server-dev-9.1

At this point, you should have all of the prerequisites for building a local Arkestrator environment.

On Github, you should fork the main Arkestrator repository. Visit https://github.com/adreyer/arkestrator and click the "fork" button. If you want to work on BBKing, you should visit https://github.com/adreyer/BBKing and fork that too.

Next, create a virtualenv and activate it. Change to the working directory where you want to set up your virtualenv:

cd ~/src/stuff/whatevs
virtualenv ark
cd ark
source bin/activate

We are going to install Arkestrator using Pip. We are using pip -e so that these repositories are editable. Substitute your own fork's URL here, rather than using mine. You probably want to add adreyer's repo as your upstream remote, too:

pip install -e git+ssh://git@github.com/cmroddy/arkestrator.git#egg=mdc3
cd src/mdc3/
git remote add upstream https://github.com/adreyer/arkestrator.git
cd -

If you want to work on BBKing, install that the same way:

pip install -e git+ssh://git@github.com/cmroddy/BBKing.git#egg=bbking
cd src/mdc3/
git remote add upstream https://github.com/adreyer/BBKing.git
cd -

If you don't want to work on BBKing, you can just install it with the rest of the requirements. Regardless, you need to install them, so:

cd src/mdc3
pip install -r requirements.txt

At this point, you should have all the Python code you need. Maybe Psycopg2 failed to build or something else failed to install, so make sure there are no errors in the output from Pip. If there are, fix the problem and try again.

You will need to sync and migrate your database. If you're using SQLite, make sure that you keep track of where the local database file is. Your working directory actually matters. If you're using Postgres, make sure that you've created an appropriate user and database. You probably need to edit pg_hba.conf. Whatever, I am not going to tell you how to administer your database server.

The settings.py that ships with the repo is probably wrong for you. Maybe you want to make your own and call it settings_cmroddy.py. If so, make sure to use that in your DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE environment variable, or after your --settings option whenever you run django-admin.py.

To sync and migrate the database, run:

django-admin.py syncdb --migrate --settings=mdc3.settings_cmroddy

This should spew out a bunch of output about table creation, prompt you to create an admin account, and then spew out a bunch more output about schema migrations. If there are any problems, fix them.

If you made it this far, then everything should be working. Start the development server:

django-admin.py runserver --settings=mdc3.settings_cmroddy

Production installation is possible.