Install

Installation for this project is somewhat complicated, so try to follow the recommended details to achieve the easiest installation process.
Operating System:
* Windows and Linux are much easier to complete this process on
* Mac OS is more problematic, yet possible and many users have completed this process successfully.
* If you still have issues, consider using docker. dockerfiles are provided.
Python Version:
* Stable version for this project is 3.6
* Starting on v1.6.0 python 3.7 is also supported, but it’s not stable yet. So difficulties may occur. Your best best is using 3.6.

Linux and Windows Installations are automatically tested using github actions. Mac OS users might have an issue with Bcolz.
Users have found that the easiest way to get Bcolz installed is using conda like so:
conda install -c conda-forge bcolz
If you use Python for anything other than Zipline, I strongly recommend that you install in a virtualenv.
When using postgres, some users had difficulties installing psyccopg2. A workaround is installing it manually prior to zt
conda install -c conda-forge psycopg2=2.8.6

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Python provides an excellent tutorial on virtualenv.

Installation Tutorial

Installing with git clone

Installing the cutting edge version, directly from the master branch. Just remember that documentation is not always up to date with latest and greatest. Using the Master branch install is for the more advanced users.

Installing using pip directly from github

You can install it with ability to debug it like this:

python -m pip install --upgrade pip
pip install -e git://github.com/shlomikushchi/zipline-trader.git#egg=zipline-trader

To install a specific version, you could do this (installing version 1.6.0):

python -m pip install --upgrade pip
pip install -e git://github.com/shlomikushchi/zipline-trader.git@1.6.0#egg=zipline-trader

The last step will install this project from source, giving you the ability to debug zipline-trader’s code.

Installing from pypi

The stable version is available on pypi (currently 1.6.0).

Installing from Anaconda

  • Installing using Anaconda is not supported.

Notes

Installing zipline is a bit complicated, and therefore installing zipline-trader. There are two reasons for zipline installation additional complexity:

  1. Zipline ships several C extensions that require access to the CPython C API. In order to build the C extensions, pip needs access to the CPython header files for your Python installation.

  2. Zipline depends on numpy, the core library for numerical array computing in Python. Numpy depends on having the LAPACK linear algebra routines available.

Because LAPACK and the CPython headers are non-Python dependencies, the correct way to install them varies from platform to platform. Once you’ve installed the necessary additional dependencies (see below for your particular platform)

GNU/Linux

On Debian-derived Linux distributions, you can acquire all the necessary binary dependencies from apt by running:

$ sudo apt-get install libatlas-base-dev python-dev gfortran pkg-config libfreetype6-dev hdf5-tools

On recent RHEL-derived derived Linux distributions (e.g. Fedora), the following should be sufficient to acquire the necessary additional dependencies:

$ sudo dnf install atlas-devel gcc-c++ gcc-gfortran libgfortran python-devel redhat-rpm-config hdf5

On Arch Linux, you can acquire the additional dependencies via pacman:

$ pacman -S lapack gcc gcc-fortran pkg-config hdf5

There are also AUR packages available for installing ta-lib, an optional Zipline dependency.

OSX

The version of Python shipped with OSX by default is generally out of date, and has a number of quirks because it’s used directly by the operating system. For these reasons, many developers choose to install and use a separate Python installation. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Python provides an excellent guide to Installing Python on OSX, which explains how to install Python with the Homebrew manager.

Assuming you’ve installed Python with Homebrew, you’ll also likely need the following brew packages:

$ brew install freetype pkg-config gcc openssl hdf5