CubicWeb is packaged for Debian and Ubuntu, but can be installed from source using a tarball or the Mercurial version control system.
Depending on the distribution you are using, add the appropriate line to your list of sources (for example by editing /etc/apt/sources.list).
For Debian Lenny:
deb http://ftp.logilab.org/dists/ lenny/
For Debian Sid:
deb http://ftp.logilab.org/dists/ sid/
For Ubuntu Hardy:
deb http://ftp.logilab.org/dists/ hardy/
You can now install the required packages with the following command:
apt-get update
apt-get install cubicweb cubicweb-dev
cubicweb installs the framework itself, allowing you to create new instances.
cubicweb-dev installs the development environment allowing you to develop new cubes.
There is also a wide variety of cubes listed on the CubicWeb.org Forge available as debian packages and tarball.
The repositories are signed with Logilab’s gnupg key. To avoid warning on “apt-get update”:
You can download the archive containing the sources from our ftp site at:
http://ftp.logilab.org/pub/cubicweb/
Make sure you have installed the dependencies (see appendixes for the list).
CubicWeb should soon be pip installable, stay tuned (expected in 3.8).
You can keep up to date with on-going development by using Mercurial and its forest extension:
hg fclone http://www.logilab.org/hg/forests/cubicweb
See Introducing Mercurial for more details about Mercurial.
When cloning a repository, you might be set in a development branch (the ‘default’ branch). You should check that the branches of the repositories are set to ‘stable’ (using hg up stable for each one) if you do not intend to develop the framework itself.
Do not forget to update the forest itself (using cd path/to/forest ; hg up).
Make sure you have installed the dependencies (see appendixes for the list).
Setting up a windows development environment is not too complicated but requires a series of small steps. What is proposed there is only an example of what can be done. We assume everything goes into C:\ in this document. Adjusting the installation drive should be straightforward.
You should start by downloading and installing the Python(x,y) distribution. It contains python 2.5 plus numerous useful third-party modules and applications:
http://www.pythonxy.com/download_fr.php
At the time of this writting, one gets version 2.1.15. Among the many things provided, one finds Eclipse + pydev (an arguably good IDE for python under windows).
Then you must grab Twisted. There is a windows installer directly available from this page:
http://twistedmatrix.com/trac/
A windows installer for lxml will be found there:
http://pypi.python.org/pypi/lxml/2.2.1
Check out the lxml-2.2.1-win32-py2.5.exe file. More recent bugfix releases should probably work, too.
You should find postgresql 8.4 there:
http://www.enterprisedb.com/products/pgdownload.do#windows
The python drivers for posgtresql are to be found there:
http://www.stickpeople.com/projects/python/win-psycopg/#Version2
Please be careful to select the right python (2.5) and postgres (8.4) versions.
A windows compiled recent version of gettext:
http://ftp.logilab.org/pub/gettext/gettext-0.17-win32-setup.exe
A pre-compiled version of rql for windows (take care of retrieving the most recent version available there):
http://ftp.logilab.org/pub/rql/rql-0.23.0.win32-py2.5.exe
Pyro enables remote access to cubicweb repository instances. Get it there:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pyro/files/
To access LDAP/Active directory directories, we need the python-ldap package. Windows binaries are available from:
http://www.osuch.org/python-ldap
Check out the latest release.
Having graphviz will allow schema drawings, which is quite recommended (albeit not mandatory). You should get an msi installer there:
http://www.graphviz.org/Download_windows.php
Simplejson will be provided within the forest, but a win32 compiled version will run much faster:
http://www.osuch.org/python-simplejson%3Awin32
Get mercurial + its standard windows GUI (TortoiseHG) there (the latest is the greatest):
http://bitbucket.org/tortoisehg/stable/wiki/download
If you need to peruse mercurial over ssh, it can be helpful to get an ssh client like Putty:
http://www.putty.org/
Integration of mercurial and Eclipse is convenient enough that we want it. Instructions are set there, in the Download & Install section:
http://www.vectrace.com/mercurialeclipse/
You need to enable the mercurial forest extension. To do this, edit the file:
C:\Program Files\TortoiseHg\Mercurial.ini
In the [extensions] section, add the following line:
forest=C:\Program Files\TortoiseHg\ext\forest\forest.py
Now, you need to clone the cubicweb repository. We assume that you use Eclipse. From the IDE, choose File -> Import. In the box, select Mercurial/Clone repository using MercurialEclipse.
In the import main panel you just have to:
Then, click on ‘Finish’. It might take some time to get it all. Note that the cubicwin32 forest contains additional python packages such as yapps, vobject, simplejson and twisted-web2 which are not provided with Python(x,y). This is provided for convenience, as we do not ensure the up-to-dateness of these packages, especially with respect to security fixes.
You will need some convenience environment variables once all is set up. These variables are settable through the GUI by getting at the ‘System properties’ window (by righ-clicking on ‘My Computer’ -> properties).
In the ‘advanced’ tab, there is an ‘Environment variables’ button. Click on it. That opens a small window allowing edition of user-related and system-wide variables.
We will consider only user variables. First, the PATH variable. You should ensure it contains, separated by semi-colons, and assuming you are logged in as user Jane:
C:\Documents and Settings\Jane\My Documents\Python\cubicweb\cubicweb\bin
C:\Program Files\Graphviz2.24\bin
The PYTHONPATH variable should also contain:
C:\Documents and Settings\Jane\My Documents\Python\cubicweb\
From now, on a fresh cmd shell, you should be able to type:
cubicweb-ctl list
... and get a meaningful output.
This currently assumes that the instances configurations is located at C:\etc\cubicweb.d.
For a cube ‘my_cube’, you will then find C:\etc\cubicweb.d\my_cube\win32svc.py that has to be used thusly:
win32svc install
This should just register your instance as a windows service. A simple:
net start cubicweb-my_cube
should start the service.
You can also install:
Whatever the backend used, database connection information are stored in the instance’s sources file. Currently cubicweb has been tested using Postgresql (recommanded), MySQL, SQLServer and SQLite.
For installation, please refer to the PostgreSQL project online documentation.
You need to install the three following packages: postgresql-8.X, postgresql-client-8.X, and postgresql-plpython-8.X. If you run postgres version prior to 8.3, you’ll also need the postgresql-contrib-8.X package for full-text search extension.
If you run postgres on another host than the CubicWeb repository, you should install the postgresql-client package on the CubicWeb host, and others on the database host.
Note
If you already have an existing cluster and PostgreSQL server running, you do not need to execute the initilization step of your PostgreSQL database unless you want a specific cluster for CubicWeb databases or if your existing cluster doesn’t use the UTF8 encoding (see note below).
First, initialize a PostgreSQL cluster with the command initdb.
$ initdb -E UTF8 -D /path/to/pgsql
Notice the encoding specification. This is necessary since CubicWeb usually want UTF8 encoded database. If you use a cluster with the wrong encoding, you’ll get error like:
new encoding (UTF8) is incompatible with the encoding of the template database (SQL_ASCII)
HINT: Use the same encoding as in the template database, or use template0 as template.
Once initialized, start the database server PostgreSQL with the command:
$ postgres -D /path/to/psql
If you cannot execute this command due to permission issues, please make sure that your username has write access on the database.
$ chown username /path/to/pgsql
The database authentication can be either set to ident sameuser or md5. If set to md5, make sure to use an existing user of your database. If set to ident sameuser, make sure that your client’s operating system user name has a matching user in the database. If not, please do as follow to create a user:
$ su
$ su - postgres
$ createuser -s -P username
The option -P (for password prompt), will encrypt the password with the method set in the configuration file pg_hba.conf. If you do not use this option -P, then the default value will be null and you will need to set it with:
$ su postgres -c "echo ALTER USER username WITH PASSWORD 'userpasswd' | psql"
Note
The authentication method can be configured in file:pg_hba.conf.
The above login/password will be requested when you will create an instance with cubicweb-ctl create to initialize the database of your instance.
Notice that the cubicweb-ctl db-create does database initialization that may requires a postgres superuser. That’s why a login/password is explicitly asked at this step, so you can use there a superuser without using this user when running the instance. Things that require special privileges at this step:
To avoid using a super user each time you create an install, a nice trick is to install plpython (and tsearch when needed) on the special template1 database, so they will be installed automatically when cubicweb databases are created without even with needs for special access rights. To do so, run
# Installation of plpythonu language by default ::
$ createlang -U pgadmin plpythonu template1
$ psql -U pgadmin template1
template1=# update pg_language set lanpltrusted=TRUE where lanname='plpythonu';
Where pgadmin is a postgres superuser. The last command is necessary since by default plpython is an ‘untrusted’ language and as such can’t be used by non superuser. This update fix that problem by making it trusted.
To install the tsearch plain-text index extension on postgres prior to 8.3, run:
cat /usr/share/postgresql/8.X/contrib/tsearch2.sql | psql -U username template1
Yout must add the following lines in /etc/mysql/my.cnf file:
transaction-isolation=READ-COMMITTED
default-storage-engine=INNODB
default-character-set=utf8
max_allowed_packet = 128M
Note
It is unclear whether mysql supports indexed string of arbitrary lenght or not.
As of this writing, sqlserver support is in progress. You should be able to connect, create a database and go quite far, but some of the generated SQL is still currently not accepted by the backend.
The source configuration file may look like this (specific parts only are shown):
[system]
db-driver=sqlserver2005
db-user=someuser
# database password not needed
#db-password=toto123
#db-create/init may ask for a pwd: just say anything
db-extra-arguments=Trusted_Connection
db-encoding=utf8
SQLite has the great advantage of requiring almost no configuration. Simply use ‘sqlite’ as db-driver, and set path to the dabase as db-name. Don’t specify anything for db-user and db-password, they will be ignore anyway.
Note
SQLite is great for testing and to play with cubicweb but is not suited for production environments.
If you want to use Pyro to access your instance remotly, or to have multi-source or distributed configuration, it is required to have a name server Pyro running on your network. By by default it is detected by a broadcast request, but you can specify a location in the instance’s configuration file.
To do so, you need to :
A resource mode is a predifined set of settings for various resources directories, such as cubes, instances, etc. to ease development with the framework. There are two running modes with CubicWeb:
‘user’, resources are searched / created in the user home directory:
‘system’, resources are searched / created in the system directories (eg usually requiring root access):
where <INSTALL_PREFIX> is the detected installation prefix (‘/usr/local’ for instance).
Notice that each resource path may be explicitly set using an environment variable if the default doesn’t suit your needs. Here are the default resource directories that are affected according to mode:
‘system’:
CW_INSTANCES_DIR = <INSTALL_PREFIX>/etc/cubicweb.d/
CW_INSTANCES_DATA_DIR = /var/lib/cubicweb/instances/
CW_RUNTIME_DIR = /var/run/cubicweb/
‘user’:
CW_INSTANCES_DIR = ~/etc/cubicweb.d/ CW_INSTANCES_DATA_DIR = ~/etc/cubicweb.d/ CW_RUNTIME_DIR = /tmp
Cubes search path is also affected, see the :ref:Cube section.
By default, the mode automatically set to ‘user’ if a .hg directory is found in the cubicweb package, else it’s set to ‘system’. You can force this by setting the CW_MODE environment variable to either ‘user’ or ‘system’ so you can easily:
If you’ve a doubt about the mode you’re currently running, check the first line outputed by the cubicweb-ctl list command.
Also, if cubicweb is a mercurial checkout located in <CW_SOFTWARE_ROOT>:
If you installed CubicWeb by cloning the Mercurial forest or from source distribution, then you will need to update the environment variable PYTHONPATH by adding the path to the forest cubicweb:
Add the following lines to either .bashrc or .bash_profile to configure your development environment
export PYTHONPATH=/full/path/to/cubicweb-forest
If you installed CubicWeb with packages, no configuration is required and your new cubes will be placed in /usr/share/cubicweb/cubes and your instances will be placed in /etc/cubicweb.d.
Here are all environment variables that may be used to configure CubicWeb: