Helping Out

The main GitHub repository for the project can be found at:

The project is quite mature at this point (I’ve been writing it for more than a decade!) and probably shows its age in several areas, although I’ve done my best to keep it up to date with relatively modern practices. The documentation could certainly use some extra chapters on the more tricky areas, and the test suite needs a buff to reach full coverage (though it’s not bad – 97% at the time of writing).

Development installation

If you wish to develop tvrip, obtain the source by cloning the GitHub repository and then use the “develop” target of the Makefile which will install the package as a link to the cloned repository allowing in-place development. The following example demonstrates this method within a virtual Python environment:

$ sudo apt install handbrake-cli vlc mkvtoolnix atomicparsley
$ sudo apt install build-essential git virtualenvwrapper

After installing virtualenvwrapper you’ll need to restart your shell before commands like mkvirtualenv will operate correctly. Once you’ve restarted your shell, continue:

$ cd
$ mkvirtualenv -p /usr/bin/python3 tvrip
$ workon tvrip
(tvrip) $ git clone https://github.com/waveform80/tvrip.git
(tvrip) $ cd tvrip
(tvrip) $ make develop

To pull the latest changes from git into your clone and update your installation:

$ workon tvrip
(tvrip) $ cd ~/tvrip
(tvrip) $ git pull
(tvrip) $ make develop

To remove your installation, destroy the sandbox and the clone:

(tvrip) $ deactivate
$ rmvirtualenv tvrip
$ rm -rf ~/tvrip

Building the docs

If you wish to build the docs, you’ll need a few more dependencies. Inkscape is used for conversion of SVGs to other formats, Graphviz is used for rendering certain charts, and TeX Live is required for building PDF output. The following command should install all required dependencies:

$ sudo apt install texlive-latex-recommended texlive-latex-extra \
    texlive-fonts-recommended texlive-xetex graphviz inkscape \
    python3-sphinx python3-sphinx-rtd-theme latexmk xindy

Once these are installed, you can use the “doc” target to build the documentation in all supported formats (HTML, ePub, and PDF):

$ workon tvrip
(tvrip) $ cd ~/tvrip
(tvrip) $ make doc

The HTML output is written to build/html while the PDF output goes to build/latex.

However, the easiest way to develop the documentation is with the “preview” target which will build the HTML version of the docs, and start a web-server to preview the output. The web-server will then watch for source changes (in both the documentation source, and the application’s source) and rebuild the HTML automatically as required:

$ workon tvrip
(tvrip) $ cd ~/tvrip
(tvrip) $ make preview

Test suite

If you wish to run the tvrip test suite, follow the instructions in Development installation above and then make the “test” target within the sandbox:

$ workon tvrip
(tvrip) $ cd ~/tvrip
(tvrip) $ make test

The test suite is also setup for usage with the tox utility, in which case it will attempt to execute the test suite with all supported versions of Python. If you are developing under Ubuntu you may wish to look into the Dead Snakes PPA in order to install old/new versions of Python; the tox setup will work with the version of tox shipped with Ubuntu Jammy, so you can simply apt-install it, and use the system version of tox. more features (like parallel test execution) are available with later versions.

For example, to install tox and execute the test suite under tox, skipping interpreter versions which are not installed:

$ sudo apt install tox
$ tox -s

To execute the test suite under all installed interpreter versions in parallel, using as many parallel tasks as there are CPUs, then display a combined report of coverage from all environments:

$ sudo apt install python3-coverage
$ tox -p auto -s
$ python3-coverage combine
$ python3-coverage report