How to install and run Backtrader on your local machine.

To begin setting up the environment 'cd' in your terminal to the project directory.

cd to/directory/of/project

For Linux install Pip by,

python3.4 -m pip install --user --upgrade pip

Once Pip is installed you can now install virtualenv.

virtualenv is used to manage Python packages for different projects. Using virtualenv allows you to avoid installing Python packages globally which could break system tools or other projects. You can install virtualenv using pip.

For Linux install virtualenv by,

python3.4 -m pip install --user virtualenv

virtualenv allows you to manage separate package installations for different projects. It essentially allows you to create a “virtual” isolated Python installation and install packages into that virtual installation. When you switch projects, you can simply create a new virtual environment and not have to worry about breaking the packages installed in the other environments. It is always recommended to use a virtualenv while developing Python applications.

To create a virtual environment, go to your project’s directory and run virtualenv.

For Linux create virtualenv by,

python3.4 -m virtualenv env

You should now have a folder 'env' in your local directory.

After creating your virtualenv you will then need to 'activate' it. Failing to activate your virtualenv will cause you to use global libraries. This can cause problems with overwriting dependency versions if you install them globally.

To activate on Linux have a terminal open in the project folder where you created 'env'.

Then run this command for Linux,

source env/bin/activate

You can tell if it activate successfully if your terminal has prefix '(env)'

(env) jove:~/to/directory/of/project$

You can deactivate from the virtualenv by simply running,

deactivate

To install libraries to your local library MAKE SURE you have ACTIVATED your virtualenv.

Normally Python virtualenvs come with a 'requirements.txt' file which contains all the dependencies for the source code to work. Hence you can install all the libraries in 'requirements.txt' with the following command,

pip install -r requirements.txt

You should now have the following dependencies installed,

• backtrader==1.9.67.122
• certifi==2018.10.15
• chardet==3.0.4
• cycler==0.10.0
• idna==2.7
• kiwisolver==1.0.1
• matplotlib==2.2.3
• numpy==1.15.2
• pyparsing==2.2.2
• python-dateutil==2.7.3
• pytz==2018.5
• requests==2.19.1
• six==1.11.0
• urllib3==1.23

You can check the installed dependencies on your ACTIVATED virtualenv with the command,

pip freeze

Congratulations, your Python virtualenv is setup!

Now that your Python virtual environment has been setup, make sure you have ACTIVATED it.

Once activated you can simply run the script by using the commannd,

python run.py