searxng/docs/blog/python3.rst

Introducing Python 3 support

Python 2.7 to 3 upgrade

This chapter exists of historical reasons. Python 2.7 release schedule ends (Python 2.7 clock) after 11 years Python 3 exists

As most operation systems are coming with Python3 installed by default. So it is time for searx to support Python3. But don't worry support of Python2.7 won't be dropped.

How to run searx using Python 3

Please make sure that you run at least Python 3.5.

To run searx, first a Python3 virtualenv should be created. After entering the virtualenv, dependencies must be installed. Then run searx with python3 instead of the usual python command.

virtualenv -p python3 venv3
source venv3/bin/activate
pip3 install -r requirements.txt
python3 searx/webapp.py

If you want to run searx using Python2.7, you don't have to do anything differently as before.

Fun facts

• 115 files were changed when implementing the support for both Python versions.
• All of the dependencies was compatible except for the robotframework used for browser tests. Thus, these tests were migrated to splinter. So from now on both versions are being tested on Travis and can be tested locally.

If you found bugs

Please open an issue on GitHub. Make sure that you mention your Python version in your issue, so we can investigate it properly.

Acknowledgment

This development was sponsored by NLnet Foundation.

Happy hacking.
kvch // 2017.05.13 22:57