4. Installation

4.1. System Requirements

Hardware Requirements

The minimum computer hardware requirement is a CPU that has at least the speed of a Pentium 4 with 2 GHz and one Gigabyte of RAM. The disk needs 200 MB free space during installation. While we call the 32 bit build "i386" architecture the CPU must support in fact all instructions of a Pentium III CPU. We highly recommend that you use a dual CPU/Core system.

Software Requirements

Windows: The program runs on Windows XP with at least SP2, Windows Vista and Windows 7. It can run on 32 or 64 bit versions of the Operating System. It might still run on Windows 2000 but we do not test or support it.
Linux: Required is a 2.6 kernel, glibc2.3 and an installed X11R6 compatible Server. This means that any distributions in the last years should work well. We use SUSE, CentOS (aka Red Hat Enterprise Edition) and Ubuntu for our development and testing. Previous Linux versions are not useable because Arachno needs the Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL). We recommand to use either GNOME or KDE as the desktop environment.
FreeBSD: You need at least FreeBSD 7.2. Previous versions will not work because they miss reliable support for POSIX conform named semaphores and handles. Your system must have the /proc file system mounted and the module for named semaphores must be loaded into the kernel (we describe this later).
MacOSX: You should have MacOSX 10.5 installed. It might work with previous versions down to 10.3 but we do not test or support it. You must have the X11 Server installed, which is installed by default. If it is not installed please insert your MacOSX installation DVD and install it from there. It is also available for download from Apple's website.
Solaris: You need Solaris 10 or later to use our software. We only tested it with Solaris 10u3. It might also work with earlier versions but we do not test or support it.

Also you must have installed all the freeware tools that come with Solaris 10 and are installed in directory /usr/sfw. Especially you must have /usr/sfw/bin/gtar otherwise the installer will fail to unpack the files.

4.2. Download the Installer File

Please visit our website http://www.python-ide.com/downloads.html and download the correct installer file for your operating system and computer architecture.

Installer Name Schema

The filenames for the installers match the following schema:

ArachnoPython -<os>-<cpu>-<year>-<version><beta-or-alpha-mark>.bin|exe|dmg

'os' is the operating system name (windows, macosx, linux, freebsd or solaris), the 'cpu' defines the processor architecture (for example: i386, amd64, ppc or usparc) and the 'alpha-or-beta-mark' is either 'a' for an alpha release or 'b' for a beta release. Normal releases do not have a letter following the version number.

The version number tells you how many versions where previously published in this year. This includes public beta and alpha versions. Alpha versions contain a huge amount of debugging code and will run approximately 6-8 times slower then a normal release. Beta versions still have some debugging code but are performing much better.

Examples for valid installer file names are:

ArachnoPython-linux-amd64-2009-8.bin
ArachnoPython-windows-i386-2009-3b.exe
ArachnoPython-macosx-ppc-2009-2a.dmg

4.3. Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7 Installation

Installation on Windows uses the typical Windows Installer Program.

After agreeing to the End User License and selecting the installation directory and start menu folder you will be asked for a few additional tasks.

Additional icons: You can select if a start icon is created on the Desktop and inside the taskbar.
File associations: If you check the first option the installer will add an "Edit with Arachno Python IDE" menu item to the explorer context menu. If you check the second option the file icons for all python files in the explorer will change to Arachnos default icon:
Other tasks: Arachno Python IDE ships with a small program apython.exe that you can use to open a file from the command line. If you check this option then the installer adds a directory which contains only this program to your PATH variable and make it callable from the command line shell.

If you install an alpha or beta version the "File associations" and "Other tasks" options are not displayed. This helps you to install test and uninstall beta test versions parallel to final release versions without modifying your systems behaviour.

4.4. Unix (Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD) Installation

On Unix systems we do not use your operating systems package system. The main reason is that it is not possible to install software packages without root administration rights which is a serious limit if for example a student want to use the program on a university computer.

The installation file is a binary executable. Unfortunately there is no way to preserve the execution rights over a download. So after you downloaded the file you have to set the 'x' permission bit and then start the installer program from the command line.

Open a shell and type the commands (of course use the correct name of the installer file you downloaded):

chmod u+x ArachnoPython-linux-amd64-2009-1.bin
./ArachnoPython-linux-amd64-2009-1.bin

As default it will install everything into the directory "$HOME/ArachnoPython" unless you run the installer program as root in which case the destination directory /opt instead of your home directory is used.

If you want to install the program at another place please pass the directory name as a parameter to the installer. For example you could use:

./ArachnoPython-linux-amd64-2009-1.bin  /usr/local/opt/ArachnoPHP

After the installation has finished. You will see the 'Arachno Python IDE' program icon on the Desktop and find a start entry in the "Applications -> Programming" Menu.

The installer also creates a symbolic link "aphp" to start the IDE in your home directory or in /usr/local/bin (if installed as root).

Installation Tip for Paranoid System Administrators

If you are a paranoid system administrator you might not want to run any unknown program from a small independent software vendor as root. In this case please run the installer under a normal user account. You can then check that all file permissions are okay and no file has a setuid flag set. After you verified it simply move the whole ArachnoPython directory from HOME to "/opt/ArachnoPHP" or where ever you want it. Finally you should set a symbolic link "/usr/bin/apython" which points to the file "/opt/ArachnoPython/start_me" as the start program.

Troubleshooting Installation Problems

When you run the "start_me" file and something goes wrong, you will not get any information of what went wrong, because the program detaches from the terminal before starting the main executable "arachno_python_ide". This is a very nice behaviour if everything works well but leaves you completely clueless when not.

You can start the "arachno_python_ide" directly and see if any error message is written to standard output. Usually the problem should be in a missing library or wrong library version. Use the command:

ldd arachno_python_ide

This outputs a list of the used shared libraries. If you see a 'not found' message, please contact our customer support. All shared libraries are very fundamental system libraries and should be available on all distributions and systems.

4.5. MacOSX Installation

For MacOSX we distribute a disk image file (a ".dmg" file) which contains the Arachno Python IDE application bundle. Installation then just means to drag the bundle from the disk image to your Application folder or any other desired location, on your hard drive. The Arachno Python IDE bundle is not a universal binary. While we do support Intel and PowerPC versions we deliver them as separate disk image files. Please make sure that you got the correct CPU version from our download page.

4.6. Upgrading to a new Version

Windows: You can install the new version into the same directory overwritting a previous installation or into another directory. By default alpha and beta versions will choose a different directory/program group then the final versions.
Unix: If you want to install a new version you can either uninstall the existing version first or install the new one into the same or another directory.
MacOSX: Drag the old Arachno Python IDE application bundle into the trash bin and the new bundle to the previous place or keep both of them at different locations.

All the user data files like preferences, projects etc. will not be removed during an uninstall operation because they are stored in different locations.

4.7. Move the Program after Installation

All program file accesses are made relative to the location of the main arachno_python_ide program. So you can move the whole program directory to other places after the installation without any problems. You can even copy it onto a different computer without running the installer program.

Windows: The only values written to the registry are supporting keys for the installer program and the registered file type icons. The icons will not be displayed correctly after moving the program folder. Keep in mind that the PATH environment variable needs to be modified if you want access to the apython command line starter program.
Unix: Don't forget to update the symbolic links for the apython starter program.

4.8. Installation on an USB Stick

It is possible to use Arachno Python IDE on a USB stick or any other kind of removable memory device. In this case you must follow this three steps.

Create a directory with the name "keep-all-user-data-here" inside the program directory. All user data that otherwise would go into the "Application Data" (on Windows) or the users home (on Unix) directory will now be stored here.
Put your license key into the program directory and invoke the menu item "Set License File..." file from the "Help" menu. Set the path as "${BINARY_DIRECTORY}/license-file.txt" and arachno will always find the file.
Copy the whole program directory onto your usb stick.

4.9. Uninstall

Windows

On windows use the uninstall program icon in the "Arachno Python IDE" program folder or open the Control Panel and choose 'Add or Remove Programs'. In the shown program list click on the "Arachno Python IDE" icon.

MacOSX

Just drop the "Arachno Python IDE" application bundle onto the trash bin.

Unix

In the "arachno_python_ide" program directory you find an 'uninstall' program. Please invoke this program. It will delete all files, unregister the desktop icons and menus entries and remove the symbolic program links that were created on installation.

If you invoked the installer as root then you must run the uninstaller also as root otherwise the program icons and menu entries are not correctly removed from the Desktop menu system.

You can also remove the directory simply with a "rm -rf" call but in this case the desktop icons and generated symbolic start links are not removed. This method should only be used by system administrators who don't want to call unknown binary programs as root.

4.10. Location of the Data Files

You might ask where Arachno Python IDE stores it's data? The default location is:

Windows: We use the recommendation by the 'Windows Logo Design Guidelines'. This means we store all data files into the common repository for application-specific data. This is normally a path like C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Scriptolutions\Arachno Python IDE. Please keep in mind that the "Application Data" Folder is usually invisible.
Unix: On Unix we store all data files in the directory "$HOME/.scriptolutions/"arachno_python_ide".
MacOSX: MacOSX is storing it's user data in the same way as Unix: in the directory "$HOME/.scriptolutions/"arachno_python_ide".

You can overwrite this default by setting the environment variable ARACHNO_PYTHON_DATA to a different directory. The program must always have read and write access to this directory otherwise it will display a fatal error message and terminate. Multiple subdirectories and files are created in this directory so please make sure that the directory pointed by the environment variable is reserved for the exclusive use of Arachno Python IDE.

An even higher precedence has an existing directory with the name "keep-all-user-data-here" inside the program directory as explained under Installation on an USB Stick. In this case the all data is stored in this directory.