DevAssistant - start developing with ease

DevAssistant (http://devassistant.org) can help you with creating and setting up basic projects in various languages, installing dependencies, setting up environment etc.

It is based on idea of per-{language/framework/...} "assistants" (plugins) with hierarchical structure.

Note: prior to version 0.10.0, DevAssistant has been shipped with a default set of assistants that only worked on Fedora. We decided to drop this default set and create DAPI, DevAssistant Package Index, https://dapi.devassistant.org/ - an upstream PyPI/Rubygems-like repository of packaged assistants. DAPI's main aim is to create a community around DevAssistant and provide various assistants with good support for various platforms - a task that DevAssistant core team alone is not able to achieve for a large set of assistants.

This all means that if you get DevAssistant from upstream repo or from PyPI, you will have no assistants installed by default. To get assistants, search DAPI through web browser or run da pkg search <term> and da pkg install <assistant package> . This will install one or more DAPs (DevAssistant Packages) with the desired assistants.

If you want to create your own assistants and upload them to DAPI, see http://docs.devassistant.org/en/latest/developer_documentation/create_assistant.html and http://docs.devassistant.org/en/latest/developer_documentation/create_assistant/packaging_and_distributing.html.

There are four main modes of DevAssistant execution. Explanations are provided to better illustrate what each mode is supposed to do:

create

Create new projects - scaffold source code, install dependencies, initialize SCM repos ...

tweak

Work with existing projects - add source files, import to IDEs, push to GitHub, ...

prepare

Prepare environment for working with existing upstream projects - install dependencies, set up services, ...

extras

Tasks not related to a specific project, e.g. enabling services, setting up IDEs, ...

These are some examples of what you can do:

# search for assistants that have "Django" in their description
$ da pkg search django
python - Python assistants (library, Django, Flask, GTK3)

# install the found "python" DAP, assuming it supports your OS/distro (and,
# if you want to install sevaral assistants, just separate them by a space)
$ da pkg install python

# find out if the installed package has documentation
$ da doc python
INFO: DAP "python" has these docs:
...
INFO: usage.txt
...
# show help
$ da doc python usage.txt

# if the documentation doesn't say it specifically, find out if there is a "create"
#  assistant in the installed "python" DAP
$ da create -h
...
{..., python, ...}
...

# there is, so let's find out if it has any subassistants
$ da create python -h
...
{..., django, ...}
...

# we found out that there is "django" subassistant, let's find out how to use it
$ da create python django -h
<help text with commandline options>

# help text tells us that django assistant doesn't have subassistants and is runnable, let's do it
$ da create python django -n ~/myproject # sets up Django project named "myproject" inside your home dir

# using the same approach with "pkg search", "pkg install" and "da tweak -h",
#  we find, install and read help for "tweak" assistant that imports projects to eclipse
$ da tweak eclipse -p ~/myproject # run in project dir or use -p to specify path

# using the same approach, we find, install and read help for assistant
#  that tries to prepare environment for a custom upstream project, possibly utilizing
#  its ".devassistant" file
$ da prepare custom -u scm_url -p directory_to_save_to

# sometimes, DevAssistant can really do a very special thing for you ...
$ da extras make-coffee

For full documentation, see http://doc.devassistant.org/

Should you have some questions, feel free to ask us at Freenode channel #devassistant or on our mailing list (https://lists.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devassistant). You can also join our G+ community (https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/112692240128429771916) or follow us on Twitter (https://twitter.com/dev_assistant).

If you want to see where DevAssistant development is going and you want to influence it and send your suggestions and comments, you should really join our ML: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devassistant.

To start developing, do:

git clone https://github.com/devassistant/devassistant

And install dependencies from requirements-devel.txt:

pip install --user -r requirements-devel.txt
pip install --user -r requirements-py2.txt # Only on Python 2

Apart from git, DevAssistant also assumes that polkit is installed on your machine (provides pkexec binary). If you want to work with GUI, you'll need pygobject3.

Or, assuming that you have "devassistant" DAP installed [TODO:link], you just need to do:

da prepare devassistant

DevAssistant works on Python 2.6, 2.7 and >= 3.3.

This whole project is licensed under GPLv2+, see LICENSE file for details.

List of contributors to this project can be found in the CONTRIBUTORS file.