Getting started =============== Using Vagrant ------------- This is the recommended approach, and is tested on OS X 10.10 as well as Ubuntu 14.04. If your host is OS X, download VirtualBox from . Then run: vagrant up vagrant ssh If your host is Ubuntu 14.04: sudo apt-get install vagrant lxc lxc-templates cgroup-lite redir vagrant plugin install vagrant-lxc vagrant up --provider=lxc vagrant ssh All versions, inside the container: sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install python-pbs cd /srv/zulip && python provision.py To run the development server: vagrant ssh -- -L9991:localhost:9991 # Now inside the container cd /srv/zulip source /srv/zulip-venv/bin/activate ./tools/run-dev.py You can now visit in your browser. By hand ------- Install the following non-Python dependencies: * libffi-dev — needed for some Python extensions * postgresql 9.1 or later — our database (also install development headers) * memcached (and headers) * rabbitmq-server * libldap2-dev * python-dev * redis-server — rate limiting * tsearch-extras — better text search On Debian or Ubuntu systems: sudo apt-get install libffi-dev memcached rabbitmq-server libldap2-dev redis-server postgresql-server-dev-all libmemcached-dev # If on 12.04 or wheezy: sudo apt-get install postgresql-9.1 wget https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/283158365/zuliposs/postgresql-9.1-tsearch-extras_0.1.2_amd64.deb sudo dpkg -i postgresql-9.1-tsearch-extras_0.1.2_amd64.deb # If on 14.04: sudo apt-get install postgresql-9.3 wget https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/283158365/zuliposs/postgresql-9.3-tsearch-extras_0.1.2_amd64.deb sudo dpkg -i postgresql-9.3-tsearch-extras_0.1.2_amd64.deb # If on 15.04 or jessie: sudo apt-get install postgresql-9.4 wget https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/283158365/zuliposs/postgresql-9.4-tsearch-extras_0.1_amd64.deb sudo dpkg -i postgresql-9.4-tsearch-extras_0.1_amd64.deb # Then, all versions: pip install -r requirements.txt ./scripts/setup/configure-rabbitmq ./tools/postgres-init-db ./tools/do-destroy-rebuild-database To start the development server: ./tools/run-dev.py … and hit http://localhost:9991/. Running the test suite ====================== One-time setup: ./tools/postgres-init-test-db ./tools/do-destroy-rebuild-test-database Backend tests: ./tools/test-backend Frontend tests: TBD Possible issues =============== When running the test suite, if you get an error like this: sqlalchemy.exc.ProgrammingError: (ProgrammingError) function ts_match_locs_array(unknown, text, tsquery) does not exist LINE 2: ...ECT message_id, flags, subject, rendered_content, ts_match_l... ^ … then you need to install tsearch-extras, described above. Afterwards, re-run the init*-db and the do-destroy-rebuild*-database scripts.