Development Notes

To create development environment:

mkvirtualenv --system-site-packages vttest
python setup.py develop

To generate dictionary of all datasets in all example files change dir to ViTables folder and run:

for d in arrays misc tables timeseries; do
    d=examples/$d
    for f in `ls $d`; do
        f=$d/$f
        echo \'$f\': [
        for n in `h5ls -r -S $f | grep 'Dataset' | sed s/\\\\\\\\\ /%/g | cut -f 1 -d ' ' | cut  -c 2-`; do
            n=`echo $n | sed s/%/\ /g`
            echo "    " \'$n\',
        done
        echo ],;
    done
done

Installation

Windows

The easiest way to create a standalone windows installer is to use WinPython and InnoSetup. A good description of the process was written by Cyrille Rossant. The installer will create a single folder in Program Files that contains Python and all required modules. There is currently a problem with PyQt installation. That is if a different version of PyQt is installed in the system then ViTables might crush on some functions. There is a version of ViTables already installed in WinPython so if old version is enough one can skip the steps below.

Applied to ViTable the procedure has the following steps:

1. Download source a ViTables source distribution. It is also possible to make one from the develop branch by executing the following command:

   python setup.py sdist
   

2. Install InnoSetup.

3. Download 32-bit version of WinPython that contains Python 2.7. ViTables might work with Python 3 but was not tested atm.

4. Create ViTables folder and install WinPython in it.

5. Configure WinPython using WinPython Control Panel.exe that can be found inside installed WinPython. Remove ViTables from the installation and new .tar.gz.

6. Copy vitables_setup.iss from mswindows folder of ViTables development branch into the folder that contains ViTables dir with WinPython.

7. Open vitables_setup.iss and replace WinPython and python version numbers in the line

   #define pydir "WinPython-32bit-2.7.6.4\python-2.7.6"`.
   

8. Compile vitables_setup.iss, the installer will be placed into Output dir.

If Python 2.7 along with PyQt, future and numpy is already present in the system then it is possible to install ViTables directly:

1. Clone development branch or download a source distribution that is based on it.

2. Switch to ViTables folder and run

   python setup.py bdist_wininst
   

3. The installer will be created in dist folder. It can be used to install ViTables on a system that have Python and required libraries.

Plugins

i18n

1. Create module project file

   TRANSLATIONS = plugin_ru_RU.ts
   
   SOURCES = plugin/configure.py \
             plugin/analyze.py
   

2. Run pylupdate4 to create .ts file in top level folder:

   pylupdate4 plugin.pro
   

3. Translate using linguist and store compiled version in, for example, i18n/plugin_ru_RU.qm.

4. Create resources.qrc with resource description:

   <!DOCTYPE RCC><RCC version="1.0">
   <qresource>
       <file>i18n/plugin_ru_RU.qm</file>
   </qresource>
   </RCC>
   

5. Compile resource

   pyrcc4 -o plugin/resources.py resources.qrc
   

6. Add the following to plugin class level code:

   locale_name = qtcore.QLocale.system().name()
   translator = qtcore.QTranslator()
   if not translator.load(':/i18n/plugin_{0}.qm'.format(locale_name)):
        translator = None