BotQueue for Windows

A long standing issue is that BotQueue's client bumblebee doesn't work on Windows. I'm going to try to fix that with this blog post.

I started by looking at Portable Python version 2.7. Note, that I'm installing this all on an 8GB flash drive. There's two reasons for this. The first is that I want to test this with multiple computers, and the second is that I don't have admin privileges on any of them. Go ahead and run the installer, it takes a while.

Next thing to download is easy_install so I downloaded ez_setup.py onto my flash drive and ran it using the python I had just installed:
python.exe ez_setup.py
It might tell you to run a different command. I ended up having to run:
python.exe ez_setup.py -U setuptools 
Next, add the "Scripts" directory under your App folder to your PATH variable.  For me, this was at "E:\Portable Python\App\Scripts". You should also add the App directory so python can be found anywhere. You know it worked if you can run "easy_install" in the prompt and it not completely fail.

Next, install pip and virtualenv:
easy_install pip
Now that pip is installed, open up a command prompt. Run this:
pip install Pygments pyserial requests requests-oauth
pip install pyserial --upgrade
Next, we need to install curses for windows. Go here, and download the win32 2.7 one. I ran this to install curses:
easy_install curses-2.2.win32-py2.7.exe
Now run botqueue's bumblebee client! You'll have to run my version here, instead of the official botqueue (until that branch is merged, so if the branch doesn't exist, it's probably merged in). Any bugs you find, feel free to report them on github on the official issues page, or in the google groups.

There are some issues when you move from one computer to another, so I put the curses exe, and an egg (for pycharm debugging) in the root of the flash drive. Then, I created a batch file that was just these contents:
"%~dp0\Portable Python\App\python.exe" ez_setup.py -U setuptools
"%~dp0\Portable Python\App\Scripts\easy_install.exe" pip
"%~dp0\Portable Python\App\Scripts\pip.exe" install virtualenv Pygments pyserial requests requests-oauth --upgrade
"%~dp0\Portable Python\App\Scripts\easy_install.exe" curses-2.2.win32-py2.7.exe
"%~dp0\Portable Python\App\Scripts\easy_install.exe" pycharm-debug.egg

That fixed any issues I had when moving to another computer. The last line is optional and only needed if you're using pycharm's debugging like I am. I will probably do another blog post on how to set up that, because it was definitely interesting to do.

EDIT: Also, not all bugs have been fixed and pushed to the 0.5X-dev branch. I'll update this again when it's ready.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

New paint job and other "minor fixes"

I've always found it interesting how the human brain worked. Recently, I've been playing with  Tailwind CSS  and reading the  Refactoring UI book . One of my longer term projects has been working on BotQueue v2, with all of the fun issues and delays with that. At some point, I realized that I would have to make the site look semi-professional. So I decided to learn how to do some UI stuff which is where that UI book comes in. The same author is also behind Tailwind CSS which is a really nifty utility first CSS framework that I would recommend checking out. What I didn't expect is how doing even a little effort in making the design look good would help my motivation to work on it. I've been focusing on removing blockers recently, and it's fascinating what I find is a blocker. I didn't really expect a little bit of "paint" to go a long way in me working on it. I no longer had the "it's functional, but it's going to suck to make it pretty l
Read more

What it's like working in tech with ADHD

Whoa, it's been almost 3 years since I last update this blog? Geez, what's happened in the interim? Well... A lot. I'm currently coming up on two years as a software developer for Uber, and what a crazy couple of years it's been. I'm not sure why I haven't written in a while. This blog was always designed to describe my adventure, navigating from job to job and what I learned or sharing some perspective that might help others. Today I'm going to share a personal perspective on what it's like working in tech with ADHD (if you couldn't tell from the title). Alright, so first things first, let's define some context. This is as much for you reading this as it is for me writing it. What is ADHD? ADHD stands for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Okay, so that's not very useful is it. I mean there's this ADD thing which is everything minus the hyperactivity. Okay, perfect, that explains it! I have a deficit of attention.... and it
Read more

BotQueue client updates!

It's been only a couple of months since the last software release, but it feels like it has been far too long. Instead of releasing 0.6, I'm releasing 0.5.1 today. There are two reasons for this, which I'll get to in a minute. But first, features! Makerbot support Or at least, mostly Makerbot support. It supports all of the printers that speak s3g/x3g, so no 5th generation (yet). There is also way to slice things. I have a solution for that, it's just somewhat difficult to work with closed source software. For now, you can upload your *3g files and it will run them just fine. It also allows you to upload .makerbot files, but those aren't supported yet. Automatic updates This is something I've wanted to do for a long time, and is the first reason why this only jumped up to 0.5.1. I released version 0.5.0, and in the very next commit, released 0.5.1. This was to test the auto update feature. Every 2 minutes, if your bots are either in idle, error, or offli
Read more