Obtaining and Installing Comet
==============================

Installation using pip
----------------------

The latest version of Comet and all of the tools it depends upon can be
installed using `pip <http://www.pip-installer.org/>`_. It is generally a good
idea to use `virtualenv <http://www.virtualenv.org/>`_ to create an isolated,
self-contained installation::

  $ virtualenv comet
  $ . comet/bin/activate
  $ pip install comet

Manual installation
-------------------

Requirements
^^^^^^^^^^^^

Comet is developed targeting Python 2.7 with experimental support for Python
3.4 and later. It depends upon:

* `Twisted <http://twistedmatrix.com/>`_ (version 11.1.0 or later for Python
  2.7; 16.0 or later for Python 3.x);
* `lxml <http://lxml.de/>`_ (version 2.3 or later);
* `zope.interface <http://docs.zope.org/zope.interface/>`_ (versions 3.6.0 or
  later for Python 2.6; 4.1.1 or later for Python 3.x);
* `py2-ipaddress <https://bitbucket.org/kwi/py2-ipaddress/>`_ (Python 2.7
  only; not required for Python 3.x).

How you make these dependencies available on your system is up to your (or,
perhaps, to your system administrator). However, the author strongly suggests
you might start by taking a look at `virtualenv
<http://www.virtualenv.org/>`_.

Downloading
^^^^^^^^^^^

See the :doc:`release history <history>` to obtain the latest version of Comet
or check out the source from the `GitHub repository
<http://www.github.com/jdswinbank/Comet>`_. The latest version of the source
can be obtained using `git <http://git-scm.org>`_::

  $ git clone https://github.com/jdswinbank/Comet.git

Installation
^^^^^^^^^^^^

Comet includes a `distutils <http://docs.python.org/distutils/index.html>`_
setup script which can be used for installation. To install in your
system-default location, run::

  $ python setup.py install

A number of other options are available: see also::

  $ python setup.py --help

Testing
-------

After installation, you should check that Comet is working properly. The
Twisted framework used by Comet makes this easy with its ``trial`` tool.
Simply run::

  $ trial comet

No failures or errors are expected in the test suite. If you see a problem,
please contact the author for help.