Setting up your development environment

This page contains instructions on how to setup your development environment to run Tribler from source.

Windows

This section contains information about setting up a Tribler development environment on Windows. Unlike Linux based systems where installing third-party libraries is often a single apt-get command, installing and configuring the necessary libraries requires more attention on Windows. Moreover, the Windows environment has different file structures. For instance, where Linux is working extensively with .so (shared object) files, Windows uses DLL files.

Introduction

In this guide, all required dependencies of Tribler will be explained. It presents how to install these dependencies. Some dependencies have to be built from source whereas other dependencies can be installed using a .msi or .exe installer. The guide targets Windows 7 or higher, 64-bit systems, however, it is probably not very hard to install 32-bit packages.

First, Python 2.7 should be installed. If you already have a Python version installed, please check whether this version is 64 bit before proceeding.

python -c "import struct;print( 8 * struct.calcsize('P'))"

This outputs whether your current installation is 32 or 64 bit.

Python can be downloaded from the official Python website. You should download the Windows x86-64 MSI Installer which is an executable. During the setup, remember to install pip/setuptools and to add Python to the PATH variable to access Python from the command line. The option to add Python to the PATH variable is unchecked by default! You can verify whether Python is installed correctly by typing python in the command line. Also check whether pip is working by typing pip in the command line. If they are not working, check whether the PATH variables are correctly set.

If you did not change the default installation location, Python should be located at C:\\Python27\\. The third-party libraries are located in C:\\Python27\\Lib\\site-packages. If you forgot to add Python to your PATH during the setup, you need to add the C:\\Python27\\ and C:\\Python27\\Scripts directories to your PATH variable. Information about how to set path variable can be found here.

In order to compile some of the dependencies of Tribler, you will need Visual Studio 2015 which can be downloaded from here or here. You should select the community edition. Visual Studio ships with a command line interface that can be used for building some of the Python packages. Moreover, it provides a nice IDE which can be used to work on Python projects. After installation of Visual Studio, you should install the Visual C++ tools. This can be done from within Visual Studio by creating a new Visual C++ project. Visual Studio then gives an option to install the Visual C++ developer tools.

In case importing one of the modules fail due to a DLL error, you can inspect if there are files missing by opening it with Dependency Walker. It should show missing dependencies. In our case, we were missing MSVCR100.DLL which belongs to the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 SP1 Redistributable Package (x64). This package can be downloaded from the Microsoft website. One other DLL that was missing was MSVCR110.DLL, which belongs to the Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2012 Update 4. After installing these two packages, there should be no more import errors. It may be required to enable Visual C++ Toolset on the Command Line if Native Command Line tool is not available. You can do that by following article here.

M2Crypto

The first package to be installed is M2Crypto which can be installed using pip (the M2Crypto binary is precompiled):

pip install M2CryptoWin64 # use M2CryptoWin32 for the 32-bit version of M2Crypto
python -c "import M2Crypto" # test whether M2Crypto can be successfully imported

If the second statement does not raise an error, M2Crypto is successfully installed.

PyQt5

If you wish to run the Tribler Graphical User Interface, PyQt5 should be available on the system. While PyQt5 is available in the pip repository, this is only compatible with Python 3. There is an unofficial distribution available for Python 2.7 here https://github.com/pyqt/python-qt5. You can simply install PyQt5 from this repository.

pip install git+git://github.com/pyqt/python-qt5.git

After installation, check it was correctly installed

python -c "import PyQt5" # this should work without any error

Alternatively, if above steps do not work, follow the instructions below.

Start by downloading the Qt library from here. You can either compile it from source or use a Qt installer which automatically installs the pre-compiled libraries. Make sure to choose the correct distribution based on your platform(32/64 bit).

After the Qt installation is completed, PyQt5 should be compiled. This library depends on SIP, another library to automatically generate Python bindings from C++ code. Download the latest SIP version here, extract it, navigate to the directory where it has been extracted and compile/install it (don’t forget to execute these commands in the Visual Studio command line):

python configure.py
nmake
nmake install

Next, download PyQt5 from here and make sure that you download the version that matches with the version of Qt you installed in the previous steps. Extract the binary and compile it:

python configure.py --qmake=<qmake_path> --disable=QtNfc --disable=QtBluetooth
nmake
nmake install
python -c "import PyQt5" # this should work without any error

Note that <qmake_path> is the path to the qmake.exe file path. For eg. qmake could be here C:\Qt\Qt5.6.2\5.6\msvc2015_64\bin\qmake.exe but depends on your installation. Here, we are disabling QtNfc and QtBluetooth modules which contains classes that provide connectivity between NFC & Bluetooth enabled devices respectively which we do not require in Tribler. Moreover, not disabling these modules may lead to missing DLL files causing installation to fail. So, we can safely disable them. The installation can take a while. After it has finished, the PyQt5 library is installed correctly.

pyWin32 Tools

In order to access some of the Windows API functions, pywin32 should be installed. The pywin32 installer can be downloaded from Sourceforge and make sure to select the amd64 version and the version compatible with Python 2.7.

apsw

The apsw (Another Python SQLite Wrapper) installer can be downloaded from GitHub. Again, make sure to select the amd64 version that is compatible with Python 2.7. You can test whether it is installed correctly by running:

python -c "import apsw"

libtorrent

To install libtorrent, you can simply copy the libtorrent.pyd file from the Github repository here and place it inside your python site-packages directory.

Alternatively, if above does not work then you can try to compile from source. First, install Boost which can be downloaded from SourceForge. Make sure to select the latest version and choose the version is compatible with your version of Visual C++ tools (probably msvc-14).

After installation, you should set an environment variable to let libtorrent know where Boost can be found. You can do this by going to Control Panel > System > Advanced > Environment Variables (more information about setting environment variables can be found here). Now add a variable named BOOST_ROOT and with the value of your Boost location. The default installation location for the Boost libraries is C:\\local\\boost_<BOOST VERSION> where <BOOST VERSION> indicates the installed Boost version.

Next, you should build Boost.build. You can do this by opening the Visual Studio command prompt and navigating to your Boost libraries. Navigate to tools\\build and execute bootstrap.bat. This will create the b2.exe file. In order to invoke b2 from anywhere in your command line, you should add the Boost directory to your user PATH environment variable. After modifying your PATH, you should reopen your command prompt.

Now, download the libtorrent source code from GitHub and extract it. It is advised to compile version 1.0.8. Note that you if you have a 32-bit system, you can download the .msi installer so you do not have to compile libtorrent yourself. Open the Developer Command Prompt shipped with Visual Studio (not the regular command prompt) and navigate to the location where you extracted the libtorrent source. In the directory where the libtorrent source code is located, navigate to bindings\\python and build libtorrent by executing the following command (this takes a while so make sure to grab a coffee while waiting):

b2 boost=source libtorrent-link=static address-model=64

This command will build a static libtorrent 64-bit debug binary. You can also build a release binary by appending release to the command given above. After the build has been completed, the resulting libtorrent.pyd can be found in LIBTORRENT_SOURCE\\bindings\\python\\bin\\msvc-14\\debug\\address-model-64\\boost-source\\link-static\\ where LIBTORRENT_SOURCE indicates the directory with the libtorrent source files. Copy libtorrent.pyd to your site-packages location (the default location is C:\\Python27\\Lib\\site-packages)

After successfully copying the libtorrent.pyd file either compiled or from the repository, you can check if the installation was successful:

python -c "import libtorrent" # this should work without any error

libsodium

Libsodium can be download as precompiled binary from their website. Download the latest version, built with msvc. Extract the archive to any location on your machine. Next, you should add the location of the dynamic library to your PATH variables (either as system variable or as user variable). These library files can be found in LIBSODIUM_ROOT\\x64\\Release\\v140\\dynamic\\ where LIBSODIUM_ROOT is the location of your extracted libsodium files. After modifying your PATH, you should reopen your command prompt. You test whether Python is able to load libsodium.dll by executing:

python -c "import ctypes; ctypes.cdll.LoadLibrary('libsodium')"

LevelDB

The next dependency to be installed is levelDB. LevelDB is a fast key-value storage written by Google. LevelDB itself is written in C++ but there are several Python wrappers available.

To install LevelDB, you can simply copy the leveldb.pyd file from the Github repository here and place it inside your python site-packages directory. Then, check check if installation was successful:

python -c "import leveldb" # this should work without any error

Alternatively, you will compile leveldb from source. First, download the source code from GitHub (either clone the repository or download the source code as zip). The readme on this repo contains some basic instructions on how to compile leveldb.

Next, open the levedb_ext.sln file in Visual Studio. This guide is based on the x64 release configuration. If you want to build a 32-bit leveldb project, change the configuration to win32 release.

You should edit the file paths of the include directories and the linker directories. These can be edited by right clicking on the project and selecting properties. You will need to update additional include directories (under C/C++ -> general) to point to your Python include directory (often located in C:\\Python27\\include). This is needed for the compilation of the Python bindings. Also, make sure that the following preprocessor definitions (found under C/C++ -> preprocessor) are defined: WIN32 and LEVELDB_PLATFORM_WINDOWS.

Next, additional library directories should be adjusted, found under Linker -> General. You should add the directory where your Python libraries are residing, often in C:\\Python27\\libs.

Compile by pressing the build leveldb_ext in the build menu. If any errors are showing up during compilation, please refer to the Visual Studio log file and check what’s going wrong. Often, this should be a missing include/linker directory. If compilation is successful, a leveldb_ext.pyd file should have been created in the project directory. Copy this file to your site-packages location and rename it to leveldb.pyd so Python is able to find it. You can test whether your binary is working by using the following command which should execute without any errors:

python -c "import leveldb"

VLC

To install VLC, you can download the official installer from the VideoLAN website. Make sure to install the 64-bit version of VLC.

NumPy & SciPy

To install NumPy & SciPy, download the respective .whl files here and install using with pip as below. Make sure to download files with cp27 in names as they are for python 2.7

pip install scipy‑0.19.1‑cp27‑cp27m‑win_amd64.whl
pip install numpy‑1.13.1+mkl‑cp27‑cp27m‑win_amd64.whl

Additional Packages

There are some additional packages which should be installed. They can easily be installed using pip:

pip install cython  # Needs to be installed first for meliae
pip install bitcoinlib cherrypy chardet configobj cryptography decorator feedparser meliae netifaces networkx pillow psutil twisted libnacl

Running Tribler

You should now be able to run Tribler from command line. Grab a copy of the Tribler source code and navigate in a command line interface to the source code directory. Start Tribler by running:

python run_tribler.py

You might get errors about imports in the Tribler module. To fix this, you should add the location where the Tribler directory is located to the PYTHONPATH user environment variables. Information about changing environment variables can be found here.

If there are any problems with the guide above, please feel free to fix any errors or create an issue so we can look into it.

MacOS

Tribler development environment setup on MacOS (10.10 to 10.13).

  1. MacPorts
  2. HomeBrew
  3. Tribler
  4. Notes

MacPorts

MacPorts Install instructions at macports.org. To install the Tribler dependencies using MacPorts, please run the following command in your terminal:

sudo port -N install git ffmpeg qt5-qtcreator libtorrent-rasterbar gmp mpfr libmpc libsodium py27-m2crypto py27-apsw py27-Pillow py27-twisted py27-cherrypy3 py27-cffi py27-chardet py27-configobj py27-gmpy2 py27-pycparser py27-numpy py27-idna py27-leveldb py27-cryptography py27-decorator py27-feedparser py27-netifaces py27-service_identity py27-asn1-modules py27-pyinstaller py27-pyqt5 py27-sqlite py27-matplotlib py27-libnacl

HomeBrew

Note

Skip to Tribler if you are using MacPorts because HomeBrew is a less complete alternative to MacPorts.

HomeBrew installation instructions can be found at brew.sh.

PyQt5

If you wish to run the Tribler Graphical User Interface, PyQt5 should be available on the system. While PyQt5 is available in the pip repository, this is only compatible with Python 3. To install PyQt5, we first need to install Qt5, a C++ library which can be installed with brew:

brew install qt5
brew cask install qt-creator # if you want the visual designer
qmake --version # test whether qt is installed correctly

After the installation completed, PyQt5 should be compiled. This library depends on SIP, another library to automatically generate Python bindings from C++ code. Download the latest SIP version here, extract it, navigate to the directory where it has been extracted and compile/install it:

python configure.py
make
sudo make install

Next, download PyQt5 from here and make sure that you download the version that matches with the version of Qt you installed in the previous steps. Extract the binary and compile it:

python configure.py
make
sudo make install
python -c "import PyQt5" # this should work without any error

Note that the installation can take a while. After it has finished, the PyQt5 library is installed correctly.

M2Crypto

To install M2Crypto, Openssl has to be installed first. The shipped version of openssl by Apple gives errors when compiling M2Crypto so a self-compiled version should be used. Start by downloading openssl 0.98 from here, extract it and install it:

./config --prefix=/usr/local
make && make test
sudo make install
openssl version # this should be 0.98

Also Swig 3.0.4 is required for the compilation of the M2Crypto library. The easiest way to install it, it to download Swig 3.0.4 from source here and compile it using:

./configure
make
sudo make install

Note: if you get an error about a missing PCRE library, install it with brew using brew install pcre.

Now we can install M2Crypto. First download the source (version 0.22.3 is confirmed to work on El Capitan and Yosemite) and install it:

python setup.py build build_ext --openssl=/usr/local
sudo python setup.py install build_ext --openssl=/usr/local

Reopen your terminal window and test it out by executing:

python -c "import M2Crypto"

Apsw

Apsw can be installed by brew but this does not seem to work to compile the last version (the Clang compiler uses the sqlite.h include shipped with Xcode which is outdated). Instead, the source should be downloaded from their Github repository (make sure to download a release version) and compiled using:

sudo python setup.py fetch --all build --enable-all-extensions install test
python -c "import apsw" # verify whether apsw is successfully installed

Libtorrent

An essential dependency of Tribler is libtorrent. libtorrent is dependent on Boost, a set of C++ libraries. Boost can be installed with the following command:

brew install boost
brew install boost-python

Now we can install libtorrent:

brew install libtorrent-rasterbar --with-python

After the installation, we should add a pointer to the site-packages of Python so it can find the new libtorrent library using the following command:

sudo echo 'import site; site.addsitedir("/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages")' >> /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/homebrew.pth

This command basically adds another location for the Python site-packages (the location where libtorrent-rasterbar is installed). This command should be executed since the location where brew installs the Python packages is not in sys.path. You can test whether libtorrent is correctly installed by executing:

python
>>> import libtorrent

Other Packages

There are a bunch of other packages that can easily be installed using pip and brew:

brew install homebrew/python/pillow gmp mpfr libmpc libsodium
sudo easy_install pip
pip install --user cython  # Needs to be installed first for meliae
pip install --user cherrypy cffi chardet configobj cryptography decorator feedparser gmpy2 idna leveldb meliae netifaces numpy pillow psutil pyasn1 pycparser scipy twisted service_identity libnacl bitcoinlib

If you encounter any error during the installation of Pillow, make sure that libjpeg and zlib are installed. They can be installed using:

brew tap homebrew/dupes
brew install libjpeg zlib
brew link --force zlib

Tribler

git clone --recursive  https://github.com/Tribler/tribler.git
cd tribler
cp /usr/local/lib/libsodium.dylib ./ || cp /opt/local/lib/libsodium.dylib ./
mkdir vlc
which ffmpeg | xargs -I {} cp "{}" vlc/

Proceed proceed to Build instructions

Notes

System Integrity Protection

The security system on MacOS can prevent libsodium.dylib from being dynamically linked into Tribler when running Python. If this library cannot be loaded, it gives an error that libsodium could not be found. This is because the DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH cannot be set when Python starts. More information about this can be read here.

The best solution to this problem is to link or copy libsodium.dylib into the Tribler root directory.

Help

If there are any problems with the guide above, please feel free to fix any errors or create an issue so we can look into it.

Linux

This section contains information about setting up a Tribler development environment on Linux systems.

Debian/Ubuntu/Mint

First, install the required dependencies by executing the following command in your terminal:

sudo apt-get install libav-tools libsodium18 libx11-6 python-apsw python-cherrypy3 python-cryptography python-decorator python-feedparser python-leveldb python-libtorrent python-matplotlib python-meliae python-m2crypto python-netifaces python-pil python-psutil python-pyasn1 python-scipy python-twisted python2.7 vlc python-chardet python-configobj python-pyqt5 python-pyqt5.qtsvg python-libnacl

Next, download the latest .deb file from here.

Installing the python-socks on Ubuntu >= 16.10

The python-pysocks package was renamed to python-socks in the Ubuntu repositories from version 16.10 (Yakkety Yak) onwards. Use the following command to resolve this dependency:

sudo apt-get install python-socks python-networkx python-libnacl

Installing libsodium13 and python-cryptography on Ubuntu 14.04

While installing libsodium13 and python-cryptography on a clean Ubuntu 14.04 install (possibly other versions as well), the situation can occur where the Ubuntu terminal throws the following error when trying to install the dependencies mentioned earlier in the README.rst:

E: Unable to locate package libsodium13 E: Unable to locate package python-cryptography

This means that the required packages are not directly in the available package list of Ubuntu 14.04.

To install the packages, the required files have to be downloaded from their respective websites.

For libsodium13, download libsodium13\_1.0.1-1\_<ProcessorType\>.deb from http://packages.ubuntu.com/vivid/libsodium13](http://packages.ubuntu.com/vivid/libsodium13

For python-cryptography, download python-cryptography\_0.8-1ubuntu2\_<ProcessorType\>.deb from http://packages.ubuntu.com/vivid/python-cryptography.

Installing the files Through terminal

After downloading files go to the download folder and install the files through terminal:

For amd64:

cd ./Downloads
dpkg -i libsodium13_1.0.1-1_amd64.deb
dpkg -i python-cryptography_0.8-1ubuntu2_amd64.deb

For i386:

cd ./Downloads
dpkg -i libsodium13_1.0.1-1_i386.deb
dpkg -i python-cryptography_0.8-1ubuntu2_i386.deb

Through file navigator:

Using the file navigator to go to the download folder and by clicking on the .deb files to have the software installer install the packages.

Now installing the list of dependencies should no longer throw an error.

If there are any problems with the guide above, please feel free to fix any errors or create an issue so we can look into it.

Arch Linux

Execute the following command in your terminal:

pacman -S libsodium libtorrent-rasterbar python2-pyqt5 qt5-svg phonon-qt5-vlc python2-apsw python2-cherrypy python2-cryptography python2-decorator python2-feedparser python2-chardet python2-m2crypto python2-netifaces python2-plyvel python2-twisted python2-configobj python2-matplotlib python2-networkx python2-psutil python2-scipy python2-libnacl