Installation

First of all, be aware that hcpmqe is a GUI-based tool. It will not run on a system without a GUI (headless Linux, for example).

Second, no binary installers are provided, due to the labor required to make it happen reliably for all platforms supported. A Python 3.7 (or newer) installation is required.

Installing the Python package

Given that Python 3 is installed, the process of installing hcpmqe is pretty straight forward. It’s highly suggested to use a Python virtual environment, especially if the tools is used as a one-off.

Note

Internet access is required to be able to install the package, as it depend on other packages to be loaded from PyPi (the Python package index).

This is how to do it:

  • Check the Python version:

    $ python3 --version
    Python 3.7.4
    

    Note: Python >= 3.7 is required, any higher version should do as well.

  • Create a folder to work in:

    $ mkdir hcpmqe
    $ cd hcpmqe
    
  • Setup a Python virtual environment:

    $ python3 -m venv .venv
    
  • Activate the virtual environment:

    Linux, macOS:

    $ source .venv/bin/activate
    (.venv) $
    

    Windows:

    C:\Users\sm\hcpmqe> .venv\Scripts\activate
    (.venv) C:\Users\sm\hcpmqe>
    

    Noticed the changed prompt? This shows that you have activated the virtual environment.

  • Update the Python setup tools:

    (.venv) $ pip install -U pip setuptools
    [.. a lot of messages shown here ..]
    Successfully installed pip-19.2.2 setuptools-41.2.0
    
  • Install the tools python package:

    (.venv) $ pip install hcpmqe
    Collecting hcpmqe
      Downloading hcpmqe-2.0.2.tar.gz (17 kB)
    Collecting PySimpleGUI==4.30.0
      Using cached PySimpleGUI-4.30.0-py3-none-any.whl (233 kB)
    Collecting httpx==0.16.1
      Using cached httpx-0.16.1-py3-none-any.whl (65 kB)
    Collecting certifi
      Using cached certifi-2020.11.8-py2.py3-none-any.whl (155 kB)
    Collecting httpcore==0.12.*
      Downloading httpcore-0.12.1-py3-none-any.whl (54 kB)
         |--------------------------------| 54 kB 968 kB/s
    Collecting rfc3986[idna2008]<2,>=1.3
      Using cached rfc3986-1.4.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl (31 kB)
    Collecting sniffio
      Using cached sniffio-1.2.0-py3-none-any.whl (10 kB)
    Collecting h11==0.*
      Using cached h11-0.11.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl (54 kB)
    Collecting idna; extra == "idna2008"
      Using cached idna-2.10-py2.py3-none-any.whl (58 kB)
    Using legacy 'setup.py install' for hcpmqe, since package 'wheel' is not installed.
    Installing collected packages: PySimpleGUI, certifi, sniffio, h11, httpcore, idna, rfc3986, httpx, hcpmqe
        Running setup.py install for hcpmqe ... done
    Successfully installed PySimpleGUI-4.30.0 certifi-2020.11.8 h11-0.11.0 hcpmqe-2.0.2 httpcore-0.12.1 httpx-0.16.1 idna-2.10 rfc3986-1.4.0 sniffio-1.2.0
    

Now you can run the tool as described in the following chapters, by just calling hcpmqe.

Note

Please keep in mind that you need to have the Python virtual environment activated to be able to run the tool. If in need, simply activate it by running:

$ cd hcpmqe
$ source .venv/bin/activate

or

C:\Users\sm> cd hcpmqe
C:\Users\sm\hcpmqe> .venv\Scripts\activate