Ouster Python SDK Development

Building ouster-sdk package

Building the Python SDK from source requires several dependencies:

The Python SDK source is available on the Ouster Github. You should clone the whole project.

Linux and macos

On supported Debian-based linux systems, you can install all build dependencies by running:

$ sudo apt install build-essential cmake \
                   libeigen3-dev libjsoncpp-dev libtins-dev libpcap-dev \
                   python3-dev python3-pip pybind11-dev libglfw3-dev libglew-dev

On macos >= 10.13, using homebrew, you should be able to run:

$ brew install cmake eigen jsoncpp libtins python3 pybind11 glfw glew

After you have the system dependencies, you can build the SDK with:

# first, specify the path to the ouster_example repository
$ export OUSTER_SDK_PATH=<PATH TO OUSTER_EXAMPLE REPO>

# make sure you have an up-to-date version of pip installed
$ python3 -m pip install --user --upgrade pip

# then, build an installable "wheel" package
$ python3 -m pip wheel --no-deps $OUSTER_SDK_PATH/python

# or just install directly (virtualenv recommended)
$ python3 -m pip install $OUSTER_SDK_PATH/python

Note

We recommend to always use Virtual Environment for python development.

Windows 10

On Windows 10, you’ll have to install the Visual Studio 2017 Build Tools, Python and the vcpkg package manager and run:

PS > vcpkg install eigen3 jsoncpp libtins pybind11 glfw3 glad[gl-api-33]

The currently tested vcpkg tag is 2022.02.23. After that, using a developer powershell prompt:

# first, specify the path to the ouster_example repository
PS > $env:OUSTER_SDK_PATH="<PATH TO OUSTER_EXAMPLE>"

# point cmake to the location of vcpkg (make sure to use an absolute path)
PS > $env:CMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE="<PATH TO VCPKG REPO>\scripts\buildsystems\vcpkg.cmake"

# then, build an installable "wheel" package
PS > py -m pip wheel --no-deps "$env:OUSTER_SDK_PATH\python"

# or just install directly (virtualenv recommended)
PS > py -m pip install "$env:OUSTER_SDK_PATH\python"

See the top-level README in the Ouster Example repository for more details on setting up a development environment on Windows.

Developing

Install in editable mode with pip using pip install -e. For a faster development cycle, you can rebuild using python3 setup.py build_ext -i instead of reinstalling the package after every change. For a local debug build, you can also add the -g flag.

The Ouster SDK package includes configuration for flake8 and mypy. To run:

# install and run flake8 linter
$ python3 -m pip install flake8
$ cd ${OUSTER_SDK_PATH}/python
$ python3 -m flake8

# install and run mypy in an environment with
$ python3 -m pip install mypy
$ python3 -m mypy src/

Running Tests

To run tests while developing, install the pytest package and run it from the root of the Python SDK package:

$ cd ${OUSTER_SDK_PATH}/python
$ python3 -m pytest

To run tests against multiple Python versions simultaneously, use the tox package:

$ cd ${OUSTER_SDK_PATH}/python
$ python3 -m tox

This will take longer, since it will build the package from a source distribution for each supported Python version available.

Using Dockerfile

To simplify testing on multiple linux distros, a Dockerfile is included for running tox on a variety of Debian-based distros with all packaged Python versions pre-installed. To build a test image, run:

$ docker build ${OUSTER_SDK_PATH} -f ${OUSTER_SDK_PATH}/python/Dockerfile \
    --build-arg BASE=ubuntu:20.04 \
    -t ouster-sdk-tox \

the BASE argument will default to ubuntu:18.04, but can also be set to other docker tags, e.g. ubuntu:20.04 or debian:10. Then, run the container to invoke tox:

$ docker run -it --rm ouster-sdk-tox