Installing cbltoolkit
=====================

.. warning::

    Many parts of the ``cbltoolkit`` depend on the ``opensim`` python
    package. Therefore, you should probably go through :ref:`installing-opensim` before
    installing ``cbltoolkit``.

``cbltoolkit`` is designed as a pure python package with no native
build steps. This means that there's multiple ways that you can work
with the package. The three ways we would like to outline are:

- ``pip install cbltoolkit``. This is the easiest way to get access
  to the ``cbltoolkit`` package, but is harder to modify, and will
  only work for tagged releases of ``cbltoolkit`` that have been
  uploaded to `PyPi`_.

- ``git clone`` the repository and then ``pip install repo-directory``. This
  is similar to ``pip install`` ing from `PyPi`_, but instead gets the
  package from GitHub. This is easier to modify--just change the source code
  in the cloned repository directory---but requires and explicit re-install
  step.

- ``git clone`` the repository, set ``PYTHONPATH`` to point at the cloned
  directory, and then run stuff. This requires a little bit of setup (setting
  environment variables) and a basic understanding of how python works, but
  makes it possible to immediately see the consequences of modifying the
  source code.

TODO, describe installing the ``cbltoolkit`` package from PyPi, but also
describe how to install it from source (e.g. so that students can fork
the repository and locally install their modified version as ``cbltoolkit``).

.. _PyPi: https://pypi.org/