Modifying the latest release of PyABM

If you plan on making any changes to the PyABM source code, you can use a pip “editable install” to install PyABM in your local user folder so that you can edit the source code in place without having to rebuild and reinstall the PyABM package every time you make a change. To use this feature, first install pip, then open a command window and type:

sudo pip install -e pyabm

in a command prompt in Linux, or

    pip install -e pyabm

on Windows. This will install the latest release of PyABM as an editable install so that you can import pyabm from any python window or script, and have the module imported from your own version of the source code (which will be in a folder named something like C:\users\azvoleff\src\pyabm (on Windows) or /home/azvoleff/src/pyabm (on Linux).

Modifying the development version of PyABM

There are several ways to end up with an editable version of the current development version of PyABM. If you have git installed on your system you can use a pip editable install to download the latest version of PyABM from github for you, and install it in an editable mode. If you do not have git you use distribute, which offers a “development mode”. With both approaches, the end result is having the development version of PyABM installed in such a way that any changes you make to the code take effect immediately.

If you have git installed on your system, you can use pip to clone and install the development version of PyABM from github by typing:

    sudo pip install -e git+https://github.com/azvoleff/pyabm.git#egg=pyabm

in a command prompt in Linux, or

    pip install -e git+https://github.com/azvoleff/pyabm.git#egg=pyabm

on Windows. An advantage of cloning PyABM from github is that you can easily update your copy of PyABM to include the latest changes by navigating to the main PyABM folder and typing

    git pull

to pull the latest version of the PyABM source code from git and (depending on your settings in git) merge any upstream changes with your local edits.

If you do not have git installed, download the latest development source of PyABM as a zip file. After downloading the PyABM source code, navigate to the main PyABM folder (the one with setup.py) and type:

    python setup.py develop

This will install a development version of PyABM and setup your system so that you can import pyabm from your Python interpreter from your Python scripts.