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Installing n6 Components

Where Are We?

Before any operations, ensure the current working directory is the home directory of dataman (which is supposed to be the user in whose shell you execute all commands):

cd ~

New Virtual Environment

Create a new Python virtual environment… Let its name, for the purposes of this guide, be env_py3k:

python3.11 -m venv env_py3k

Then, activate it:

source ./env_py3k/bin/activate

Now you can run the Python interpreter…

python

…to check if everything is OK:

>>> import sys
>>> sys.version_info[:2]
(3, 11)
>>> sys.executable
'/home/dataman/env_py3k/bin/python'
>>> exit()  # Do not forget to exit Python :)

Actual Installation

Enter the n6 source code directory:

cd n6

…and execute the following command to install all n6 components:

./do_setup.py -u all

Info

The suggested command-line option -u causes that, before any other action, the basic package installation tools (pip and uv) will be automatically upgraded to their newest versions.

Tip

The do_setup.py script offers a bunch of other command-line options.

In particular, you can add the --dev (or -d) option to install n6 in the development mode:

./do_setup.py -u --dev all

…so that, after installation of n6 packages, every change to their source code in subdirectories of /home/dataman/n6/* will be reflected in the virtual environment – without the necessity to install the affected packages again. Apart from that, --dev ensures that certain useful test and development tools (e.g., pytest) are also installed.

To learn more about do_setup.py’s command-line arguments, execute:

./do_setup.py --help

After successful installation, use the shell autocomplete mechanism to reveal all available executable scripts provided by the installed n6 components:

n6  # <- try the TAB key directly after typing "n6" to use autocompletion

What did we just install?

The positional command-line argument all passed to ./do_setup.py made the script install all components of n6, that is:

  • n6 pipeline components – whose implementation can be found in these n6/’s subdirectories:

    • N6DataSources – providing all basic collectors and parsers (i.e., the n6collector_* and n6parser_* components, focused on dealing with particular data sources)
    • N6DataPipeline – providing such components as: n6enrich, n6aggregator, n6comparator, n6filter, n6recorder and others…

  • web components of n6 – whose implementation can be found in these n6/’s subdirectories:

    • N6Portal – providing n6 Portal (the GUI for end users)
    • N6RestApi – providing n6 REST API (for those end users who prefer to interact with n6 via custom client scripts/applications…)
    • N6AdminPanel – providing n6 Admin Panel (a simple GUI app for administrators only – to manage the contents of Auth DB)
    • not discussed in this guide: N6BrokerAuthApi (providing a RabbitMQ HTTP auth backend implementation, being a part of the optional n6 Stream API stuff – see a separate setup guide dedicated to n6 Stream API…)

  • n6’s library stuff and helper scripts – whose implementation can be found in the n6/’s subdirectories N6Lib and N6SDK.

See also:

Architecture and Data Flow Overview