1 Your Development Environment
2 ============================
8 Just about anything which can edit plain text will work for writing Python code,
9 however, using a more powerful editor may make your life a bit easier.
15 Vim is a text editor which uses keyboard shortcuts for editing instead of menus
16 or icons. There exist a couple of plugins and settings for the VIM editor to
17 aid python development. If you only develop in Python, a good start is to set
18 the default settings for indentation and line-wrapping to values compliant with
19 `PEP 8 <http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/>`_. In your home directory,
20 open a file called `.vimrc` and add the following lines: ::
29 With these settings, newlines are inserted after 79 characters and indentation
30 is set to 4 spaces per tab. If you also use VIM for other languages, there is a
31 handy plugin at indent_, which handles indentation settings for python source
34 There is also a handy syntax plugin at syntax_ featuring some improvements over
35 the syntax file included in VIM 6.1.
37 These plugins supply you with a basic environment for developing in Python.
38 To get the most out of Vim, you should continually check your code for syntax
39 errors and PEP8 compliance. Luckily PEP8_ and Pyflakes_ will do this for you.
40 If your VIM is compiled with `+python` you can also utilize some very handy
41 plugins to do these checks from within the editor.
43 For PEP8 checking, install the vim-pep8_ plugin, and for pyflakes you can
44 install vim-pyflakes_. Now you can map the functions `Pep8()` or `Pyflakes()`
45 to any hotkey or action you want in Vim. Both plugins will display errors at
46 the bottom of the screen, and provide an easy way to jump to the corresponding
47 line. It's very handy to call these functions whenever you save a file. In
48 order to do this, add the following lines to your `vimrc`::
50 autocmd BufWritePost *.py call Pyflakes()
51 autocmd BufWritePost *.py call Pep8()
53 If you are already using syntastic_ you can enable it to run Pyflakes on write
54 and show errors and warnings in the quickfix window. An example configuration
55 to do that which also shows status and warning messages in the statusbar would be::
57 set statusline+=%#warningmsg#
58 set statusline+=%{SyntasticStatuslineFlag()}
60 let g:syntastic_auto_loc_list=1
61 let g:syntastic_loc_list_height=5
64 .. _indent: http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=974
65 .. _syntax: http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=790
66 .. _Pyflakes: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/pyflakes/
67 .. _vim-pyflakes: https://github.com/nvie/vim-pyflakes
68 .. _PEP8: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/pep8/
69 .. _vim-pep8: https://github.com/nvie/vim-pep8
70 .. _syntastic: https://github.com/scrooloose/syntastic
72 .. todo:: add supertab notes
77 "`TextMate <http://macromates.com/>`_ brings Apple's approach to operating
78 systems into the world of text editors. By bridging UNIX underpinnings and GUI,
79 TextMate cherry-picks the best of both worlds to the benefit of expert
80 scripters and novice users alike."
85 "`Sublime Text <http://www.sublimetext.com/>`_ is a sophisticated text editor
86 for code, html and prose. You'll love the slick user interface and
87 extraordinary features."
89 Sublime Text has excellent support for editing Python code and uses Python for
95 PyCharm / IntelliJ IDEA
96 -----------------------
98 `PyCharm <http://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/>`_ is developed by JetBrains, also
99 known for IntelliJ IDEA. Both share the same code base and most of PyCharm's
100 features can be brought to IntelliJ with the free `Python Plug-In <http://plugins.intellij.net/plugin/?id=631/>`_.
106 The most popular Eclipse plugin for Python development is Aptana's
107 `PyDev <http://pydev.org>`_.
112 `Komodo IDE <http://www.activestate.com/komodo-ide>`_ is developed by
113 ActiveState and is a commercial IDE for Windows, Mac
120 `Spyder <http://code.google.com/p/spyderlib/>`_ an IDE specifically geared
121 toward working with scientific python libraries (namely `Scipy <http://www.scipy.org/>`_).
122 Includes integration with pyflakes_, `pylint <http://www.logilab.org/857>`_,
123 and `rope <http://rope.sourceforge.net/>`_.
125 Spyder is open-source (free), offers code completion, syntax highlighting,
126 class and function browser, and object inspection.
132 `WingIDE <http://wingware.com/>`_ a python specific IDE. Runs for Linux,
133 Windows, and Mac (as an X11 application, which frustrates some Mac users).
143 Virtualenv is a tool to keep the dependencies required by different projects
144 in separate places, by creating virtual Python environments for them.
145 It solves the "Project X depends on version 1.x but, Project Y needs 4.x"
146 dilemma and keeps your global site-packages directory clean and manageable.
148 `virtualenv <http://www.virtualenv.org/en/latest/index.html>`_ creates
149 a folder which contains all the necessary executables to contain the
150 packages that a Python project would need. An example workflow is given.
154 $ pip install virtualenv
157 Create a virtual environment for a project::
162 ``virtualenv venv`` will create a folder in the current directory
163 which will contain the Python executable files, and a copy of the ``pip``
164 library which you can use to install other packages. The name of the
165 virtual environment (in this case, it was ``venv``) can be anything;
166 omitting the name will place the files in the current directory instead.
168 In order the start using the virtual environment, run::
170 $ source venv/bin/activate
173 The name of the current virtual environment will now appear on the left
174 of the prompt (e.g. ``(venv)Your-Computer:your_project UserName$``) to
175 let you know that it's active. From now on, any package that you install
176 using ``pip`` will be placed in the venv folder, isolated from the global
177 Python installation. Install packages as usual::
179 $ pip install requests
181 To stop using an environment simply type ``deactivate``. To remove the
182 environment, just remove the directory it was installed into. (In this
183 case, it would be ``rm -rf venv``).
188 Running ``virtualenv`` with the option ``--no-site-packages`` will not
189 include the packages that are installed globally. This can be useful
190 for keeping the package list clean in case it needs to be accessed later.
192 In order to keep your environment consistent, it's a good idea to "freeze"
193 the current state of the environment packages. To do this, run
197 $ pip freeze > requirements.txt
199 This will create a ``requirements.txt`` file, which contains a simple
200 list of all the packages in the current environment, and their respective
201 versions. Later, when a different developer (or you, if you need to re-
202 create the environment) can install the same packages, with the same
207 $ pip install -r requirements.txt
209 This can help ensure consistency across installations, across deployments,
210 and across developers.
212 Lastly, remember to exclude the virtual environment folder from source
213 control by adding it to the ignore list.
218 `Virtualenvwrapper <http://pypi.python.org/pypi/virtualenvwrapper>`_ makes
219 virtualenv a pleasure to use by wrapping the command line API with a nicer CLI.
223 $ pip install virtualenvwrapper
226 Put this into your `~/.bash_profile` (Linux/Mac) file:
230 $ export VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_VIRTUALENV_ARGS='--no-site-packages'
232 This will prevent your virtualenvs from relying on your (global) site packages
233 directory, so that they are completely separate..
241 `IDLE <http://docs.python.org/library/idle.html>`_ is an integrated
242 development environment that is part of Python standard library. It is
243 completely written in Python and uses Tkinter GUI toolkit. Though IDLE
244 is not suited for full-blown development using Python , it is quite
245 helpful to try out small Python snippets and experiment with different
248 It provides following features:
250 * Python Shell Window (interpreter)
251 * Multi window text editor that colorizes Python code
252 * Minimal debugging facility
258 `IPython <http://ipython.org/>`_ provides a rich toolkit to help you make the
259 most out of using Python interactively. Its main components are:
261 * Powerful Python shells (terminal- and Qt-based).
262 * A web-based notebook with the same core features but support for rich media,
263 text, code, mathematical expressions and inline plots.
264 * Support for interactive data visualization and use of GUI toolkits.
265 * Flexible, embeddable interpreters to load into your own projects.
266 * Tools for high level and interactive parallel computing.
270 $ pip install ipython
277 `bpython <http://bpython-interpreter.org/>`_ is an alternative interface to the
278 Python interpreter for Unix-like operating systems. It has the following features:
280 * In-line syntax highlighting.
281 * Readline-like autocomplete with suggestions displayed as you type.
282 * Expected parameter list for any Python function.
283 * "Rewind" function to pop the last line of code from memory and re-evaluate.
284 * Send entered code off to a pastebin.
285 * Save entered code to a file.
291 $ pip install bpython