Getting Set Up¶
The Bokeh project encompasses two major components: the Bokeh package source code, written in Python, and the BokehJS client-side library, written in CoffeeScript. Accordingly, development of Bokeh is slightly complicated by the fact that BokehJS requires an explicit compilation step to render the CoffeeScript source into deployable JavaScript.
For this reason, in order to develop Bokeh from a source checkout, you must first be able to build BokehJS.
Cloning the Repository¶
The source code for the Bokeh project is hosted on GitHub. To clone the source repository, issue the following command:
git clone https://github.com/bokeh/bokeh.git
This will create a bokeh
directory at your location. This bokeh
directory is referred to as the “source checkout” for the remainder of
this document.
Configuring Git¶
There are a few configurations you can make locally that will help make working with the repository safer and easier.
Git Hooks¶
In order to help prevent some accidental situations, here are some git hooks
that may be useful. The scripts below should be places in the .git/hooks
directory in the top level of the cloned GitHub repository and be marked
executable with e.g. chmod +x pre-commit
. For more information on git
hooks, see this reference.
pre-commit
This git hook runs the code quality tests before allowing a commit to proceed. Note that all the standard testing dependencies must be installed in order for this hook to function.
#!/bin/bash py.test -m quality exit $?
pre-push
This git hook prevents accidental pushes to
master
on GitHub.#!/bin/bash protected_branch='master' current_branch=$(git symbolic-ref HEAD | sed -e 's,.*/\(.*\),\1,') if [ $protected_branch = $current_branch ] then read -p "You're about to push master, is that what you intended? [y|n] " -n 1 -r < /dev/tty echo if echo $REPLY | grep -E '^[Yy]$' > /dev/null then exit 0 # push will execute fi exit 1 # push will not execute else exit 0 # push will execute fi
Git Aliases¶
There are also some useful aliases that can be added to the .gitconfig
file located in your home directory.
The following alias adds a git resolve
command that will automatically open up your editor to resolve any merge conflicts.
[alias]
resolve = !sh -c 'vim -p $(git status -s | grep "^UU" | cut -c4-)'
You can replace vim
with whatever your favorite editor command is.
Building BokehJS¶
The BokehJS build process is handled by Gulp, which in turn depends on
Node.js. Gulp is used to compile CoffeeScript and Less (CSS)
sources, and to combine these resources into optimized and minified
bokeh.js
and bokeh.css
files.
Install npm and node¶
First, install Node.js and npm (node package manager). You can download and install these directly, or use conda to install them from the Bokeh channel on anaconda.org:
conda install -c bokeh nodejs
Alternatively, on Ubuntu you can use apt-get
:
apt-get install npm node
Install Gulp and necessary plugins¶
Once you have npm and Node.js installed, you must use them to install the required dependencies before you can build BokehJS. Execute the following commands:
cd bokehjs
npm install
This command will install the necessary packages into the node_modules
subdirectory (and list them as devDependencies
in package.json
).
If bokehjs
fails, please check if you are working inside the bokehjs
directory.
At this point, you can typically use the setup.py
script at the top level
of the source checkout to manage the building and installing BokehJS as part of
the complete Bokeh library (see Python Setup).
However, if you want to work on the BokehJS sources or use BokehJS as a standalone library, then you need to use Gulp to build the BokehJS library as shown below.
Building BokehJS with Gulp¶
Below are the main Gulp commands for development (to be executed from
the bokehjs
subdirectory). To run these commands, you can either
use bokehjs/node_modules/.bin/gulp
, install Gulp globally via
npm:
npm install -g gulp
or install gulp via conda (recommended):
conda install -c javascript gulp
To generate the compiled and optimized BokehJS libraries with source maps,
and deploy them to the build
subdirectory:
gulp build
Additionally, gulp build
accepts a --build-dir
argument to specify
where the built resources should be produced:
gulp build --build-dir=/home/bokeh/mybuilddir
For faster development turnaround, you can skip the very slow minification step of the build by issuing:
gulp dev-build
The non-minified javascript can be used by setting the environment variable
BOKEH_MINIFIED=false
in the shell.
To direct Gulp to automatically watch the source tree for changes and trigger a recompile if any source file changes:
gulp watch
A Gulp build will automatically generate the sources and their associated source maps. With “source mapping” enabled in your browser, you will be able to:
- debug the original .coffeescript files when using
js/bokeh.js
- debug the compiled non-minified javascript when using
js/bokeh.min.js
- debug the original .less files when using
css/bokeh.css
orcss/bokeh.min.css
in your developer console.
Python Setup¶
Once you have a working BokehJS build (which you can verify by completing
the steps described in Building BokehJS), you can use the
setup.py
script at the top level of the source checkout to install or
develop the full Bokeh library from source.
The setup.py
script has two main modes of operation: install
and
develop
.
When python setup.py install
is used, Bokeh will be installed in your
local site-packages
directory. In this mode, any changes to the python
source code will not show up until setup.py install
is run again.
When python setup.py develop
is used, a path file bokeh.pth
will be
written to your site-packages
directory that points to the bokeh
subdirectory of your source checkout. Any changes to the python source code
will be available immediately without any additional steps.
With either mode, you will be prompted for how to install BokehJS, e.g.:
python setup.py install
Bokeh includes a JavaScript library (BokehJS) that has its own
build process. How would you like to handle BokehJS:
1) build and install fresh BokehJS
2) install last built BokehJS from bokeh/bokehjs/build
Choice?
You may skip this prompt by supplying the appropriate command line option
to setup.py
:
--build-js
--install-js
If you have any problems with the steps here, please contact the developers.
Dependencies¶
In order to build Bokeh from its source, you’ll have to install the project’s
python dependencies. If you’re using Conda or pip + virtualenv to setup a
development environment, you’ll be able to install these via conda install
or pip install
for the packages references at Dependencies.
There are additional testing dependencies required to run the unit tests, which include:
- beautiful-soup
- colorama
- pytest
- pytest-cov
- pytest-selenium >= 1.0
- mock
- websocket-client
- flake8
- boto
Both the build and test dependencies can potentially change between releases and be out of sync with the hosted Bokeh site documentation, so the best way to view the current required packages is the review the meta.yaml file included in the Github repository.
In addition to the build and test dependencies, you must also have the base
dependencies for Bokeh installed. A simple way to install these dependencies
is to install Bokeh via conda install
or pip install
before running
setup.py
. Alternatively, you can download them individually. The
dependencies include:
- jinja2
- numpy
- dateutil
- pyyaml
- requests
- tornado
To quickly and easily confirm that your environment contains all of the
necessary dependencies to build both the docs and the development version
of Bokeh, run the devdeps.py
file inside the bokeh/scripts
directory.
If any needed packages are missing, you will be given output like this
------------------------------------------------------------------
You are missing the following Dev dependencies:
* beautiful-soup
------------------------------------------------------------------
You are missing the following Docs dependencies:
* sphinx
* pygments
Otherwise, you should see this message
------------------------------------------------------------------
All Dev dependencies installed! You are good to go!
------------------------------------------------------------------
All Docs dependencies installed! You are good to go!
Additionally, devdeps.py
will check that the bokehjs/node_modules
directory exists, which is where npm packages are installed.
If this directory is not found, it will provide instructions on how and where to install npm packages.
Windows Notes¶
If you build Bokeh on a Windows machine in a Conda environment with either
setup.py install
or setup.py develop
, running bokeh serve
will
not work correctly. The .exe will not be available within the Conda
environment, which means you will use the version available in the base
install, if it is available. Instead, you can make sure you use the Python
version within the environment by making use of Python’s -m
flag,
as in the following example:
python -m bokeh serve path\to\<yourapp>.py
Developing Examples¶
The processes described so far, discussed solely building BokehJS’ components. When using them in the development repository, you must be cautious about which components are picked by Bokeh, especially when working on examples. Failing to do so, may result in you testing wrong version, specifically CDN version of BokehJS.
In the case of statically generated HTML or IPython notebooks, you should set
BOKEH_DEV=true
in the shell, e.g.:
BOKEH_DEV=true python example.py
This enables the development mode, which uses absolute paths to development
(non-minified) BokehJS components, sets logging to debug
, makes generated
HTML and JSON human-readable, etc. Alternatively, you can enable each part of
the development mode with a specific shell variable. For example, to configure
Bokeh to use relative paths to development resources, issue:
BOKEH_RESOURCES=relative-dev python example.py
For Bokeh server examples, add BOKEH_DEV=true
to the server invocation:
BOKEH_DEV=true bokeh serve example-server.py
Browser caching¶
During development, depending on the type of configured resources, aggressive browser caching can sometimes cause new BokehJS code changes to not be picked up. It is recommended that during normal development, browser caching be disabled. Instructions for different browsers can be found here:
Additionally, some browsers also provide a “private mode” that may disable caching automatically.
Even with caching disabled, on some browsers, it may still be required to sometimes force a page reload. Keyboard shortcuts for forcing page refreshes can be found here:
If it appears that new changes are not being executed when they should be, it is recommended to try this first.