The printable version is no longer supported and may have rendering errors. Please update your browser bookmarks and please use the default browser print function instead.

Installing Marble's Python Bindings

General requirements

Marble's Python Bindings only depend on PyQt and SIP and do not require the kdebindings-python package provided by some distributions (these are only for some other KDE Python bindings).

Getting the Dependencies

deb-based distributions (Debian, Ubuntu...):

$ sudo apt-get install python-sip-dev python-qt4

OpenSuSE: All the necessary dependencies:

$ sudo zypper install python-sip python-sip-bin python-qt4

Fedora/RHEL: All the dependencies used for building kdelibs can be installed by running:

$ sudo yum install python-sip python-sip-bin python-qt4

Arch Linux: All the dependencies used for building kdelibs can be installed by running:

$ sudo pacman -Sy python-sip python-pyqt4

Installing the Marble Python bindings

To install the Marble Python bindings we will need to compile Marble from source. The following commands will download and compile Marble:

$ git clone git://anongit.kde.org/marble.git ~/marble/sources -b KDE/4.12
$ mkdir -p ~/marble/build
$ cd ~/marble/build
$ cmake ~/marble/sources -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DEXPERIMENTAL_PYTHON_BINDINGS=TRUE -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr/local
$ make
$ sudo make install

On Arch Linux you will have to add the following options to cmake so it looks like this:

$ cmake ~/marble/sources -DQT_QMAKE_EXECUTABLE=qmake-qt4 -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr -DEXPERIMENTAL_PYTHON_BINDINGS=TRUE

For an example of build instructions visit Marble's sources page. Just make sure to add the -DEXPERIMENTAL_PYTHON_BINDINGS=TRUE flags to cmake

Writing some Code

For tutorials on how to use Marble with Python, please see this techbase page. For documentation of the Marble Python bindings, see api.kde.org.

For writing Python code we suggest you use an IDE such as Qt Creator that includes syntax highlighting and auto-indentation.