bigchaindb/docs/source/installing.md

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Installing BigchainDB

We're developing BigchainDB on Ubuntu 14.04, but it should work on any OS that runs RethinkDB Server and Python 3.4+. (BigchainDB is built on top of RethinkDB Server.)

Install and Run RethinkDB Server

The RethinkDB documentation has instructions for how to install RethinkDB Server on a variety of operating systems. Do that (using their instructions for your OS): Install RethinkDB Server.

RethinkDB Server doesn't require any special configuration. You can run it by opening a Terminal and entering:

$ rethinkdb

Install Python 3.4+

If you don't already have it, then you should install Python 3.4+ (maybe in a virtual environment, so it doesn't conflict with other Python projects you're working on).

Install BigchainDB

BigchainDB has some OS-level dependencies. In particular, you need to install the OS-level dependencies for the Python cryptography package. Instructions for installing those dependencies on your OS can be found in the cryptography package documentation.

On Ubuntu 14.04, we found that the following was enough (YMMV):

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install libffi-dev g++ libssl-dev python3-dev

With OS-level dependencies installed, you can install BigchainDB with pip or from source.

How to Install BigchainDB with pip

BigchainDB is distributed as a Python package on PyPI so you can install it using pip. First, make sure you have a version of pip installed for Python 3.4+:

$ pip -V

If it says the associated Python version is Python 3.4+, then you can do:

$ pip install bigchaindb

If it says that pip isn't installed, or it says pip is associated with a Python version less then 3.4, then you must install a pip version associated with Python 3.4+. See the pip installation instructions.

On Ubuntu 14.04, we found that this works:

$ sudo apt-get python3-pip
$ sudo pip3 install bigchaindb

(It might not be necessary to use sudo in the last command above, but we found that it was necessary for Ubuntu 14.04 on an Amazon Web Services (AWS) instance.)

In general, once you have a version of pip associated with Python 3.4+, then you can install BigchainDB using pip install bigchaindb or pipVER install bigchaindb where pipVER is replaced by whatever you must use to call a version of pip associated with Python 3.4+ (e.g. pip3).

How to Install BigchainDB from Source

BigchainDB is in its early stages and being actively developed on its GitHub repository. Contributions are highly appreciated.

Clone the public repository:

$ git clone git@github.com:bigchaindb/bigchaindb.git

Install from the source:

$ python setup.py install

How to Install BigchainDB Using Docker

Coming soon...

Run BigchainDB

After installing BigchainDB, run it with:

$ bigchaindb start

During its first run, BigchainDB takes care of configuring a single node environment.