Installing FutureGrid Rain

You can install the FutureGrid Rain using one of the following procedures.

Using easy_install

This option has the following prerequisites:

  • Python 2.6 or higher. If Python is not available on your machine, you can find installation instructions here: http://www.python.org/getit/. Take into account that, if you are using a Linux distribution, you should be able to install it using your distribution’s package manager (e.g., apt-get install python on Debian and Ubuntu). If you are using a Mac, Python is included by default; however, if your version is too old, take a look at the following instructions: http://www.python.org/getit/mac/
  • Python Distribute 0.6.15 or higher. As noted above, you can verify if this package is installed by running easy_install --version. If it is not available, you can find installation instructions here: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/distribute#installation-instructions. Take into account that, although Python Distribute is included as an optional package in most Linux distributions, it is sometimes available under the name “Setuptools” (e.g., python-setuptools in Debian and Ubuntu systems), since Python Distribute is a fork of the Setuptools project.

If you meet these prerequisites, you should be able to install FutureGrid Rain simply by running this as root:

easy_install -U futuregrid

If you are using Ubuntu or Mac OS X, you will likely just need to run this:

sudo easy_install -U futuregrid

If you do not have administrative privileges on your machine, you will have to install FutureGrid Rain under your regular user account:

easy_install -U futuregrid --user

Note

Installing FutureGrid Rain in your home directory will install the FutureGrid Rain commands in ~/.local/bin, which may not be in your PATH environment variable. If not, make sure to update the definition of your PATH environment variable (e.g., in the ~/.profile file if you are using a BASH shell).

Alternatively, you can also request that the commands be installed in a directory that is already in your $PATH. You may want to use ~/bin/, as most Linux distributions will automatically include that directory in your PATH.

easy_install -U futuregrid  --user -s ~/bin/

Using a source tarball

If you do not have Python Distribute, or are unable to install it, you can still install FutureGrid Rain by downloading a source tarball yourself. This tarball contains an installation script that will install and setup Python Distribute, and then proceed to install FutureGrid Rain.

You will first have to download the latest source tarball from the Python Package Index: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/futuregrid

Next, untar the tarball and run the installation script as root:

tar xvzf futuregrid-1.0.1.tar.gz
cd futuregrid-1.0.1
python setup.py install

Note

If you are using Ubuntu or Mac OS X, you will likely just need to run this:

sudo python setup.py install

If you do not have administrative privileges on your machine, you can choose to install everything inside your home directory:

python setup.py install --user

Tracking latest code from GitHub

If you want to use the latest version of our code from our GitHub repository, the steps are similar to installing a source tarball. However, instead of downloading a tarball, you will use git to clone our repository on your machine. Simply run the following:

git clone git@github.com:futuregrid/rain.git

This will create a directory called rain. In it, you will find the same setup.py script described in the previous section. If you want to install FutureGrid Rain, and not make any modifications to the code, you should run python setup.py install as described in the previous section.

If you intend to modify the code, and want the FutureGrid Rain commands to use the code in the git repository you’ve created on your machine, you can instead install FutureGrid Rain in “developer” mode:

python setup.py develop

This will install FutureGrid Rain but, instead of copying the Python source code to a system directory, it will create a pointer to the source directory you checked out. That way, any changes you make to the source code will take effect immediately (without having to reinstall FutureGrid Rain).

Take into account that there are, at least, two branches in our GitHub repository: master and dev. The former always contains the latest stable release, including bug fixes, and the former contains the very latest version of our code (which may not work as reliably as the code in the master branch). By default, your repository will track the master branch. To switch to the dev branch, run the following:

git checkout dev

To pull the latest changes from our GitHub repository, run the following:

git pull origin