Installing Solar Sails¶

Follow the steps below to download and install Solar Sails for your platform.

Proceed to Getting Started after you’ve finished installing the app.

macOS¶

Visit the Travis CI build page for Solar Sails. Click on the build job that says “Xcode: xcode8”.
Scroll to the very bottom of the page. Find the line that begins with download_url: ....
Highlight the entire URL starting with https://s3.amazonaws.com and ending with .tar.bz2.
Copy the URL to your clipboard.
Paste the URL into your browser location bar and press return. The download should begin.
After the download completes, open the downloaded Solar Sails.app.tar.bz2 file to extract the app.
Move the resulting Solar Sails app to your Applications folder.
Open the app. You will likely receive a warning dialog. Refer to Apple’s Open an app from an unidentified developer page, and authorize the Solar Sails app.
If the app closes immediately the first time you open it, open it a second time. This is a known issue, but only occurs once each time you install and authorize a new version.

If the app launches successfully, you’ll see a small window containing large “Solar Sails” text. Now proceed to Getting Started.

Windows¶

Visit the AppVeyor latest build artifact page for Solar Sails.
Click on dist.zip. The download should begin.
After the download completes, reveal the file in explorer.
Right-click the file and click Extract All.
Choose the destination folder of your choice and click Extract. A folder named solar-sails will be created within the destination folder.
Open the solar-sails application inside the folder. Click Run when the security warning dialog appears.

If the app launches successfully, you’ll see a small window containing large “Solar Sails” text. Now proceed to Getting Started.

Linux¶

It is difficult to provide a bundled package that works well across several Linux distributions. Therefore please follow the steps below for your distribution.

Debian variants without Python 3.6¶

Examples: Debian, Linux Mint, Ubuntu.

This assumes you cannot install python3-dev, or if you do, only Python 3.5 is available. The steps below help you use pyenv to install Python 3.6.

First-time setup¶

$ sudo apt install python-dev build-essential libasound2-dev librtmidi-dev libpcre3-dev \
    zlib1g-dev libbz2-dev libreadline-dev libssl-dev libsqlite3-dev

$ git clone https://github.com/pyenv/pyenv.git ~/.pyenv
$ echo 'export PYENV_ROOT="$HOME/.pyenv"' >> ~/.bashrc
$ echo 'export PATH="$PYENV_ROOT/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bashrc
$ echo -e 'if command -v pyenv 1>/dev/null 2>&1; then\n  eval "$(pyenv init -)"\nfi' >> ~/.bashrc
$ exec "$SHELL"

$ pyenv install 3.6.4
$ git clone https://github.com/metrasynth/solar-sails ~/solar-sails
$ cd solar-sails
$ pyenv shell 3.6.4
$ python --version  # => Python 3.6.4
$ python -m venv venv
$ source venv/bin/activate
$ pip install -r requirements/app.txt
$ pip install -e $PWD

Starting Solar Sails¶

$ ~/solar-sails/venv/bin/sails-gui <optional-mmckpy-pathname>

Updating Solar Sails¶

$ cd ~/solar-sails
$ source venv/bin/activate
$ git pull
$ pip install -r requirements/app.txt
$ pip install -e $PWD

Solus¶

This is based on Solus 3 Budgie.

First-time setup¶

$ sudo eopkg install -c system.devel
$ sudo eopkg install alsa-lib-devel git
$ cd ~
$ git clone https://github.com/metrasynth/solar-sails
    # The following is optional, but contains many MMCK example scripts:
$ git clone https://github.com/metrasynth/gallery
$ cd ~/solar-sails
$ python3 -m venv venv
$ source venv/bin/activate
$ pip install -r requirements/app.txt
$ pip install -e .

Starting Solar Sails¶

$ ~/solar-sails/venv/bin/sails-gui <optional-mmckpy-pathname>

Updating Solar Sails¶

$ cd ~/solar-sails
$ source venv/bin/activate
$ git pull
$ pip install -r requirements/app.txt
$ pip install -e $PWD