Make Sure Install Instructions are Clear and Intuitive

[navila-luna]

Make install does not install all required packages to run the program. New users are not informed that they need to create a virtual environment, install flask, install poetry, and install dedupe. The following are the exact commands I wrote to successfully run make start without an error message, you need to run the following steps:

1. Create a virtual environment and activate the environment
   • $ python3 -m venv .venv
   • . .venv/bin/activate
2. Install Flask: pip3 install flask
3. (mac) brew install poetry
4. Install dedupe: pip3 install dedupe

Note these are the commands that worked on my M1 computer.

[Gaelan]

I'm not too familiar with Python stuff, but I think Poetry's supposed to manage the venv+dependencies for you. So you just install Poetry (following the instructions at https://python-poetry.org/docs/#installation), then just do poetry shell to get into a venv with the necessary stuff.

[Gaelan]

Oops, I see you already installed poetry through brew, so yeah poetry shell should be all you need.

Documenting this is a good idea!

[navila-luna]

Hello Gaelan, currently the make file only runs the poetry file which does not include flask installation. So if you do not have flask installed you need to create a virtual instrument and then install flask. This is also noted in the README that poetry requires flask installation. The steps I listed above are the ones I did in order to run the program. However, I understand there may be different ways of producing the same results. Feel free to list what worked for you.

[IsaacMilarky]

There is no reason why we can't install the program with make install.

We plan to switch to an electron app anyways and that stack can just be pointed towards a python virtual environment. We should have the makefile create or use an existing python virtual environment that is passed in via an environment variable or prompted via a shell script.

[IsaacMilarky]

Wait until electron app is further along.