Developer Installation

Building the aeon package from source is a requirement for users who wish to contribute to the aeon codebase and documentation. The following guide will walk through downloading the latest development source code from GitHub and installing the package.

Prior to these steps, we highly recommend creating a virtual environment for the installation.

Step 1 - Fork and/or clone the repository

The first step is to clone the aeon repository to a local directory. If you plan to make a pull request on the GitHub repository, you should first fork the repository. Create a fork of the aeon repository by clicking the “Fork” button in the top right corner of the repository page or here.

The aeon repository should be cloned to a local directory using Git.

Using the git command line, the following commands will clone the main branch of the repository to a local directory:

git clone https://github.com/aeon-toolkit/aeon.git
cd aeon

If you have forked the repository, clone your fork instead i.e.:

git clone https://github.com/your-username/aeon.git
cd aeon

Step 2 - Building aeon from source

To build and install aeon from source, navigate to the local clone’s root directory and type:

pip install --editable .[dev]

Alternatively, the . may be replaced with a full or relative path to the root directory.

This will install the aeon package in editable mode with dependencies required for development. The --editable flag allows you to edit the code in-place and have the changes reflected in the installed package without having to re-install the package.

If you need to work with optional dependencies, it you can also install the all_extras extras:

pip install --editable .[dev,all_extras]

If this results in a “no matches found” error, it may be due to how your shell handles special characters. Try surrounding the dependency portion with quotes:

pip install --editable ."[dev]"

Step 3 - Install pre-commit

The aeon repository uses pre-commit to run a series of checks on the codebase before committing changes. To install pre-commit, run:

pre-commit install

This will run various code-quality hooks on the codebase before committing changes, potentially changing the formatting of your code.

This is a requirement to make a pull request, and only in exceptional circumstances will a pull request be accepted without passing pre-commit checks.