New Developer - Getting Started

ssbkt · 01-04-2010, 05:26 PM

I'm interested in looking into a sort of 'Sync' feature where books flagged to 'sync' with the device would be automatically sent to the device on the next connection similar to the way news is.

So I started looking into setting up a Windows development environment but am finding it very slow going. I have the source and followed the sets in the User guide to get the Hello World example working but I'm finding it difficult to figure out where to do things like define a new Sync column in the main interface.

This is where a debugging environment would come in very handy. I found this thread https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=62475 where 'user_none' mentions additional dependancies, so I know that it must be possible for others to setup their environment but is there more detailed instructions to help a new developer get started?

kovidgoyal · 01-04-2010, 06:00 PM

By a debugging environment you mean running calibre code in a python debugger?

I've never done that with calibre code, even in linux. Python has excellent support for introspection, so I tend to just use print statements

Read up on the pdb module (Python Debugger) you can use that within calibre.

kovidgoyal · 01-04-2010, 06:04 PM

Oh and if you want to do device syncing the first step is to implement a local metadata cache on the devices to keep track of the books.

itimpi · 01-04-2010, 06:24 PM

I have also successfully used Eclipse as an IDE, with the PyDev extensions to give interactive debugging.

user_none · 01-04-2010, 06:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Oh and if you want to do device syncing the first step is to implement a local metadata cache on the devices to keep track of the books.

ssbkt, if you want to tackle this speak up. I was planning on starting this on the weekend. But if you would like to do it be my guest.

ssbkt · 01-04-2010, 06:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by itimpi

I have also successfully used Eclipse as an IDE, with the PyDev extensions to give interactive debugging.

Can you share any pointers that you remember about setting this up? I downloaded and installed PyDev as well but am having problems with the environment.

ssbkt · 01-04-2010, 06:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by user_none

ssbkt, if you want to tackle this speak up. I was planning on starting this on the weekend. But if you would like to do it be my guest.

I'm not likely to get very far with this until I can get a good environment setup for it. I'll keep plugging away on trying to figure this out. I may just use Kovid's print statement suggestion.

How are the various windows exe's created: calibre, calibredb, etc?

kovidgoyal · 01-04-2010, 07:35 PM

Building calibre from scratch on windows is not for the faint of heart, there's a windowsdevelopment page on the calibre wiki that outlines how to build various dependencies. If you can build them/pinch them from the calibre install folder, you can then compile calibre. The various executables are just thin wrappers (~500 lines of C code to initialize and launch the python interpreter).

user_none · 01-04-2010, 09:01 PM

Calibre is primarily developed on Linux. As such Kovid has made it very easy to get going on Linux. I don't know about building on Windows but if it's anything like OS X there are some hard coded paths it expects.

ssbkt · 01-04-2010, 10:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by user_none

Calibre is primarily developed on Linux. As such Kovid has made it very easy to get going on Linux. I don't know about building on Windows but if it's anything like OS X there are some hard coded paths it expects.

Ok, if Linux is easier than I'll build up a VirtualBox image of Ubuntu and work on this.

user_none · 01-05-2010, 06:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ssbkt

Ok, if Linux is easier than I'll build up a VirtualBox image of Ubuntu and work on this.

Have a look at http://calibre-ebook.com/download_linux. At the bottom is a partial list of dependencies. You can go without Podofo if you aren't going to be doing much with PDF. Also you will need to install build essential and the dev packages for poppler.

Here is a quick rundown of getting started.

Code:

bzr pull lp:calibre
python setup.py develop

I like to use --prefix install_path with develop to install into a custom location. If you got complaints about missing dependencies then install them.

01-04-2010, 05:26 PM	#1
ssbkt Junior Member Posts: 9 Karma: 10 Join Date: Sep 2009 Device: Sony PRS-505	New Developer - Getting Started I'm interested in looking into a sort of 'Sync' feature where books flagged to 'sync' with the device would be automatically sent to the device on the next connection similar to the way news is. So I started looking into setting up a Windows development environment but am finding it very slow going. I have the source and followed the sets in the User guide to get the Hello World example working but I'm finding it difficult to figure out where to do things like define a new Sync column in the main interface. This is where a debugging environment would come in very handy. I found this thread https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=62475 where 'user_none' mentions additional dependancies, so I know that it must be possible for others to setup their environment but is there more detailed instructions to help a new developer get started?

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01-04-2010, 06:00 PM	#2
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 43,844 Karma: 22666666 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	By a debugging environment you mean running calibre code in a python debugger? I've never done that with calibre code, even in linux. Python has excellent support for introspection, so I tend to just use print statements Read up on the pdb module (Python Debugger) you can use that within calibre.

01-04-2010, 06:04 PM	#3
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 43,844 Karma: 22666666 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	Oh and if you want to do device syncing the first step is to implement a local metadata cache on the devices to keep track of the books.

01-04-2010, 06:24 PM	#4
itimpi Wizard Posts: 4,552 Karma: 950151 Join Date: Nov 2008 Device: Sony PRS-950, iphone/ipad (Marvin/iBooks/QuickReader)	I have also successfully used Eclipse as an IDE, with the PyDev extensions to give interactive debugging.

01-04-2010, 07:35 PM	#8
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 43,844 Karma: 22666666 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	Building calibre from scratch on windows is not for the faint of heart, there's a windowsdevelopment page on the calibre wiki that outlines how to build various dependencies. If you can build them/pinch them from the calibre install folder, you can then compile calibre. The various executables are just thin wrappers (~500 lines of C code to initialize and launch the python interpreter).

01-04-2010, 09:01 PM	#9
user_none Sigil & calibre developer Posts: 2,488 Karma: 1063785 Join Date: Jan 2009 Location: Florida, USA Device: Nook STR	Calibre is primarily developed on Linux. As such Kovid has made it very easy to get going on Linux. I don't know about building on Windows but if it's anything like OS X there are some hard coded paths it expects.