Installation

First, you must clone Starling locally from the github project.

git clone https://github.com/tellae/starling.git

Then, you can either install dependencies directly on your Linux or use a Docker container (Linux or Windows).

We recommend the Linux installation for development and the Docker installation for running simulations.

On-device (Ubuntu)

This procedure is described for Ubuntu 18.04 or 20.04 with Python 3.6 or higher already installed.

First, install the necessary Linux packages with

sudo apt-get install -yy -q libcurl4-gnutls-dev \
    libssl-dev libproj-dev libgdal-dev gdal-bin python3-gdal \
    libgdal-dev libudunits2-dev pkg-config libnlopt-dev libxml2-dev \
    libcairo2-dev libudunits2-dev \
    libgdal-dev libgeos-dev libproj-dev python3-pip python3-dev \
    build-essential libspatialindex-dev python3-rtree

and then the Python dependencies using pip3

# upgrade pip
python3 -m pip install --upgrade pip
# install the project requirements
pip3 install -r requirements.txt

Docker (Linux or Windows)

Docker installation

For installing Docker on Linux or Windows, you should refer to the official documentation.

Image creation

Run the following command to create a Docker image named starling containing Python and all the project requirements. This image doesn’t contain Starling source code but it contains all python dependencies for running Starling.

docker build . --tag="starling"

Note

The Dockerfile creates a new Linux user named ‘starling_user’. If you need to use sudo in the container, the password is also ‘starling_user’.

You should then be able to use this image to create Docker containers running the framework. Use the -v option to mount the Starling repository in the container. On Windows, replace $(pwd) by %cd% to get the absolute path to the current folder.

Detached mode

You can execute Docker in detached mode, which allows you to let one or more simulations run on their own.

Linux

docker run -d -v "$(pwd):/starling_dir/" --name container_name starling\
    bash -c "my_command -option"

Windows

docker run -d -v "%cd%:/starling_dir/" --name container_name starling\
    bash -c "my_command -option"

Interactive mode

You can also run Docker in interactive mode, which will place you inside the container and allow you to execute shell commands as in a terminal.

Linux

docker run -it -v "$(pwd):/starling_dir/" --name container_name starling

Windows

docker run -it -v "%cd%:/starling_dir/" --name container_name starling

What’s next

The next pre-requisite to run a simulation is to understand the repository structure. To do so, jump to the next section.