Installation on Windows¶
This guide covers the following topics:
Installing Python (used to “convert” the source files to HTML)
Installing Python¶
Download the Python installation package for Windows. In this guide version 3.9.x is used.
Install Python with the installation wizard. Please make sure that you enable the “Add Python to PATH” option:
The option must be enabled so you can build the manual with the make script.¶
All other settings can remain as set by default.
Installing Git and Downloading the Repository¶
In this guide, we will use the official Git client, though any Git client will do.
Download and install Git for Windows.
Simply check out the Blender Manual’s repository using:
cd ~ git lfs install git clone https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender-manual.git
The repository will now be downloaded which may take a few minutes depending on your internet connection.
Note
This process can be completed using a graphical Git client, in that case you will just use the repository address in the URL field provided by your client:
https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender-manual.git
Setting up the Build Environment¶
Open a Terminal window.
Enter the
blender-manual
folder which was just added bygit clone
:cd C:\blender-manual
Install dependencies:
make setup
If all goes well, you should see the following message when it is finished:
Successfully installed Jinja2 MarkupSafe Pygments Sphinx docutils sphinx-rtd-theme Cleaning up...
During setup, some warnings may be shown, but do not worry about them. However, if any errors occur, they may cause some problems.
Note
Every now and then you need to re-run this command, to make sure dependencies are up to date.
Tip
make setup
automatically creates a virtual environment using these commands:
python -m venv .venv
.venv/Scripts/pip install -r requirements.txt
This avoids interfering with the system Python installation, following PEP 668
The Sphinx command is available at:
.venv/Scripts/sphinx-build