Nikola is a static site and blog generator written in Python that I’ve been using for a good while now. This blog post describes how to install Nikola on Debian. Now, this may look like a long winded way to install Nikola, given that Debian .deb package exist, but in my opinion it is the correct way to install Nikola on Debian.

Installing Python

First you’ll need Python and virtualenvwrapper

sudo apt-get install libpython2.7 python2.7 python2.7-dev python2.7-minimal

Remove any apt installed Python packages that we are about to replace. The versions of these packages in the Debian repositories soon get stale.

sudo apt-get purge python-setuptools python-virtualenv python-pip python-profiler

Install pip.

wget https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py
sudo python2.7 get-pip.py

Use pip to install virtualenv and virtualenvwrapper.

sudo pip install virtualenv --upgrade
sudo pip install virtualenvwrapper

The Snakepit

Create a “Snakepit” directory for storing all the virtualenvs.

mkdir ~/Snakepit

Add the following your ~/.bashrc to enable virtualenvwrapper.

export WORKON_HOME=${HOME}/Snakepit
if [ -f /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh ]; then
    source /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh
elif [ -f /usr/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh ]; then
    source /usr/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh
fi

Create a virtualenv for Nikola

Open a new shell to ensure that the virtualenvwrapper configuration is active. The following will create a new virtualenv called nikola based on Python 2.7.

mkvirtualenv -p /usr/bin/python2.7 ~/Snakepit/nikola-640

Working on a virtualenv

To activate an existing virtualenv do the following.

workon nikola-640

You can switch to another virtualenv at any time, just use workon envname. Your shell prompt will change while a virtualenv is being worked on to indicate which virtualenv is currently active.

While working on a virtualenv you can pip install what you need or manually install any Python libraries safe in the knowledge you will not adversely damage any other virtualenvs or the global packages in the process. Very useful for developing a new branch which may have different library requirements than the master/head.

When you are finished working in a virtualenv you can deactivate it by simply executing deactivate.

Install Nikola requirements

Nikola is will be powered by Python 2.7 and some additional packages will be required.

sudo apt-get install python2.7-dev libfreetype6-dev libjpeg8-dev libxslt1-dev libxml2-dev libyaml-dev

What are these requirements for?

• python2.7-dev provides the header files for Python 2.7 so that Python modules with C extensions can be built.

The following are required to build pillow, the Python imaging library.

• libjpeg8-dev
• libfreetype6-dev

The following are required to build lxml, a Python XML library.

• libxml2-dev
• libxslt1-dev

The following are required to build python-coveralls.

• libyaml-dev

Install Nikola

Download Nikola.

mkdir -p ${VIRTUAL_ENV}/src
cd ${VIRTUAL_ENV}/src
wget https://github.com/getnikola/nikola/archive/v6.4.0.tar.gz -O nikola-640.tar.gz
tar zxvf nikola-640.tar.gz
cd nikola-6.4.0

Install the Nikola requirements.

pip install -r requirements-full.txt

If you intend to use the Nikola planetoid (Planet generator) plugin you’ll also need to following.

pip install peewee feedparser

Actually install nikola.

python setup.py install

Nikola is now installed. nikola help and the Nikola Handbook will assist you from here on.