Your Development Environment ============================ Text Editors :::::::::::: VIM --- There exist a couple of plugins and settings for the VIM editor to aid python development. If you only develop in Python, a good start is to set the default settings for indentation and linewrapping to values compliant with PEP8:: set textwidth=79 set shiftwidth=4 set tabstop=4 set expandtab set softtabstop=4 set shiftround With these settings newlines are inserted after 79 characters and indentation is set to 4 spaces per tab. If you also use VIM for other languages, there is a handy plugin at indent_, which handles indentation settings for python source files. Additionally there is also a handy syntax plugin at syntax_ featuring some improvements over the syntax file included in VIM 6.1. These plugins supply you with a basic environment for developing in Python. However in order to improve the programming flow we also want to continually check for PEP8 compliance and check syntax. Luckily there exist PEP8_ and Pyflakes_ to do this for you. If your VIM is compiled with `+python` you can also utilize some very handy plugins to do these checks from within the editor. For PEP8 checking install vim-pep8_. Now you can map the vim function `Pep8()` to any hotkey or action you want. Similarly for pyflakes you can install vim-pyflakes_. Now you can map `Pyflakes()` like the PEP8 function and have it called quickly. Both plugins will display errors in a quickfix list and provide an easy way to jump to the corresponding line. A very handy setting is calling these functions whenever a buffer is saved. In order to do this, enter the following lines into your vimrc:: autocmd BufWritePost *.py call Pyflakes() autocmd BufWritePost *.py call Pep8() .. _indent: http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=974 .. _syntax: http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=790 .. _Pyflakes: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/pyflakes/ .. _vim-pyflakes: https://github.com/nvie/vim-pyflakes .. _PEP8: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/pep8/ .. _vim-pep8: https://github.com/nvie/vim-pep8 .. todo:: add supertab notes IDEs :::: PyCharm / IntelliJ IDEA ----------------------- PyCharm is developed by JetBrains, also known for IntelliJ IDEA. Both share the same code base and most of PyCharm's features can be brought to IntelliJ with the free `Python Plug-In `_.. Eclipse ------- The most popular Eclipse plugin for Python development is Aptana's `PyDev `_. Komodo IDE ----------- `Komodo IDE `_ is developed by ActiveState and is a commerical IDE for Windows, Mac and Linux. Spyder ------ `Spyder `_ an IDE specifically geared toward working with scientific python libraries (namely `Scipy `_). Includes integration with `pyflakes `_, `pylint `_, and `rope `_. Spyder is open-source (free), offers code completion, syntax highlighting, class and function browser, and object inspection Interpreter Tools ::::::::::::::::: virtualenv ---------- Virtualenv is a tool to keep the dependencies required by different projects in separate places, by creating virtual Python environments for them. It solves the "Project X depends on version 1.x but, Project Y needs 4.x" dilemma and keeps your global site-packages directory clean and manageable. virtualenvwrapper ----------------- Virtualenvwrapper makes virtualenv a pleasure to use by wrapping the command line API with a nicer CLI. :: pip install virtualenvwrapper Put this into your `~/.bash_profile` (Linux/Mac) file: :: export VIRTUALENVWRAPPER_VIRTUALENV_ARGS='--no-site-packages' This will prevent your virtualenvs from relying on your (global) site packages directory, so that they are completely separate.. Other Tools ::::::::::: IPython ------- :: $ pip install ipython BPython ------- :: $ pip install bpython