Using the standard ez_alea_setup.py script, we added functionalities to install OpenAlea/VisuAlea as a non-root user following instructions found in the setuptools pages (.pydistutils.cfg configuration file).

This section provides a step-by-step instructions for installing OpenAlea and Visualea and several dependencies when you do not have the root permission on your system.

This solution has been tested on a Fedora Core 10 and Ubuntu 8.10 distributions.

• Get third-party dependencies such as Qt4: see Third-party librairies such as Qt4.
• Clean up previous OpenAlea installation by removing egg files such as OpenAlea.Deploy and remove the following environmental files:

rm ~/.openalea.sh
rm ~/.pydistutils.cfg

If you already installed and launch VisuAlea, you also have a directory called ~/.openalea . There is no need to delete this directory (where you may have done some developments)

We suppose that you have a bash shell.

• Download the following script : ez_alea_setup.py. Save this file in your home directory (e.g, in '/home/user/').
• Type the following commands to set up the directory where you want to install openalea and to start the installation process:

cd
export OPENALEA_HOME=$HOME/devlp
mkdir $OPENALEA_HOME
python ~/ez_alea_setup.py --install-dir $OPENALEA_HOME

• OpenAlea base packages will be installed in $OPENALEA_HOME/lib.

The installation process can take a long time depending of your network connection (between 5 and 15 minutes). Please be patient !

• Under Linux, the OpenAlea installer should pop up automatically. Install the desired packages check the “checkall” button and click the “install” button.
• Once the packages have been installed, quit alea_install_gui. An information message tells you to set your PYTHONPATH and to create a visualea alias. To make visualea working in any shell and in future sessions, add the following commands to your .bashrc file :

export OPENALEA_HOME=$HOME/devlp
export PYTHONPATH=$PYTHONPATH:$OPENALEA_HOME/lib:$OPENALEA_HOME/
alias visualea='$OPENALEA_HOME/bin/visualea'

• Open a new shell and type

visualea

The main difference with a standard (root) installation is that you provide an argument followed by the directory where you want to install the packages.

• Internally, the ez_alea_setup.py script will create the 2 sub-directories 'lib' and 'bin' if they do not exist.
• A file called .pydistutils is created in your home directory. This file will be used if you attend to use setuptools/distutils in the future. See Distutils config file.
• To keep track of the installed shared libraries, a file shared-lib.pth is created in the $OPENALEA_HOME/lib directory. That's why you also need to update your PYTHONPATH in your environment.