Getting started

Main Page > Development > Getting Started

This wiki page describes getting started with Archivematica as a developer. For user and administrative manuals, please see http://www.archivematica.org.

Vital Stats

• Language: Python (primarily)
• License: AGPL
• VCS: git
• Major libraries: Django, gearman (Python API)
• Coding style

Projects

Archivematica consists of several projects working together.

• Archivematica: Main repository containing the user-facing dashboard, task manager MCPServer and clients scripts for the MCPClient
• Storage Service: Responsible for moving files to Archivematica for processing, and from Archivematica into storage
• Format Policy Registry: Submodule shared between Archivematica and the Format Policy Registry (FPR) server that displays and updates FPR rules and commands

There are also several smaller repositories that support Archivematica in various ways. In general, you will not need these to develop on Archivematica.

• Development tools: Scripts to help with development. E.g. restarting services, workflow analysis
• FPR tools: All the tools, commands and rules used to populate the FPR database. Changes to the FPR should be submitted here.
• Archivematica Documentation: Documentation found at https://www.archivematica.org/en/docs/ Note that storage service documentation is found in the storage service repository.
• Automation Tools: Scripts used to automate processing material through Archivematica
• Deployment: Ansible scripts for deploying and configuring Archivematica
• Deployment-Archivematica: Ansible playbook for Archivematica package install.
• Deployment-Archivematica-dev: Ansible playbook for Archivematica github install.
• Fixity checker: Commandline tool that assists in checking fixity for AIPs stored in Archivematica Storage Service instances.
• Sample data: Data to test and show off Archivematica's processing
• History: Contains the pre-git history of Archivematica. Useful for checking the origins of code.

Installation

There are two main ways to run Archivematica in development.

1. Use ansible and vagrant to install Archivematica in a VM
2. Install Archivematica on your development machine

Ansible & Vagrant

To install and run Archivematica from source on a VM:

1. Checkout deployment repo
   • git clone git@github.com:artefactual/deploy-pub.git
2. Temporary: switch to playbooks/archivematica branch
   • git checkout playbooks/archivematica
3. Install VirtualBox, Vagrant, Ansible
   • sudo apt-get install virtualbox vagrant
   • Vagrant must be at least 1.5
     • vagrant --version
   • sudo pip install ansible
4. Helpers
   • Install vagrant helper plugin http://hakunin.com/six-ansible-practices
     • vagrant plugin install vagrant-hostsupdater
   • Guest additions https://github.com/dotless-de/vagrant-vbguest
     • vagrant plugin install vagrant-vbguest
5. Create machine
   • cd deploy-pub/playbooks/archivematica/
   • vagrant up
   • Will prompt for sudo to modify /etc/hosts adding am-local.myapp.dev
6. Login now available (but nothing needs to be run on the VM)
   • ssh root@am-local.myapp.dev
7. Get updates to roles
   • ansible-galaxy install -r requirements.yml [--force]
8. Execute playbook
   • ansible-playbook -i hosts singlenode.yml
9. Archivematica should be available at 192.168.168.192 and the storage service at 192.168.168.192:8000

You may want to add this to your .ssh/config

Host 192.168.168.* *.myapp.dev
  StrictHostKeyChecking no
  UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null
  User root
  LogLevel ERROR

Development Machine

See development environment setup instructions

Tests

Archivematica and the related projects have a small but growing test suite. We use py.test to run our tests, which should be listed as a requirement in the development/local requirements file.

To run the tests, go to the repository root and run py.test

See below for project-specific setup or changes to running the tests.

Archivematica

Before running Archivematica tests, set the following environment variables.

#!/usr/bin/fish
set -xg DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE 'settings.local'
set -xg DJANGO_SECRET_KEY 'ADDKEY'
set -xg PYTHONPATH /usr/share/archivematica/dashboard/ /usr/lib/archivematica/archivematicaCommon/

#!/usr/bin/bash
export DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE='settings.local'
export DJANGO_SECRET_KEY='ADDKEY'
export PYTHONPATH=$PYTHONPATH:/usr/share/archivematica/dashboard/:/usr/lib/archivematica/archivematicaCommon/

Storage Service

Before running Storage Service tests, set the following environment variables

#!/usr/bin/fish
set -xg DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE storage_service.settings.local
set -xg DJANGO_SECRET_KEY 'ADDKEY'
set -xg SS_DB_NAME 'storage_service/default.db'
set -xg SS_DB_USER ''
set -xg SS_DB_PASSWORD ''
set -xg SS_DB_HOST ''
set -xg PYTHONPATH .  # The repository root

#!/usr/bin/bash
export DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=storage_service.settings.local
export DJANGO_SECRET_KEY='ADDKEY'
export SS_DB_NAME='storage_service/default.db'
export SS_DB_USER=''
export SS_DB_PASSWORD=''
export SS_DB_HOST=''
export PYTHONPATH=.  # The repository root

Run tests from the storage_service subdirectory.

Skip known-failing test with py.test --ignore locations/tests/test_models.py