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Trac Installation Guide for 1.4

Trac is written in the Python programming language and needs a database, SQLite, PostgreSQL, or MySQL. For HTML rendering, Trac uses the Jinja2 templating system, though Genshi templates will still be supported until at least Trac 1.5.1.

Trac can also be localized, and there is probably a translation available in your language. If you want to use the Trac interface in other languages, then make sure you have installed the optional package Babel. Pay attention to the extra steps for localization support in the Installing Trac section below. Lacking Babel, you will only get the default English version.

If you're interested in contributing new translations for other languages or enhancing the existing translations, please have a look at TracL10N.

What follows are generic instructions for installing and setting up Trac. While you may find instructions for installing Trac on specific systems at TracInstallPlatforms, please first read through these general instructions to get a good understanding of the tasks involved.

Dependencies

Mandatory Dependencies

To install Trac, the following software packages must be installed:

  • Python, version >= 2.7 and < 3.0 (note that we dropped the support for Python 2.6 in this release)
  • setuptools, version >= 0.6
  • Jinja2, version >= 2.9.3
Setuptools Warning: If the version of your setuptools is in the range 5.4 through 5.6, the environment variable PKG_RESOURCES_CACHE_ZIP_MANIFESTS must be set in order to avoid significant performance degradation. More information may be found in Deploying Trac.

You also need a database system and the corresponding python bindings. The database can be either SQLite, PostgreSQL or MySQL.

For the SQLite database

You already have the SQLite database bindings bundled with the standard distribution of Python (the sqlite3 module).

Optionally, you may install a newer version of pysqlite than the one provided by the Python distribution. See PySqlite for details.

For the PostgreSQL database

You need to install the database and its Python bindings:

See DatabaseBackend for details.

For the MySQL database

Trac works well with MySQL, provided you use the following:

Given the caveats and known issues surrounding MySQL, read carefully the MySqlDb page before creating the database.

Optional Dependencies

Subversion

Subversion, 1.6.x or later and the corresponding Python bindings.

There are pre-compiled SWIG bindings available for various platforms. See getting Subversion for more information.

Note:

  • Trac doesn't use PySVN, nor does it work yet with the newer ctype-style bindings.
  • If using Subversion, Trac must be installed on the same machine. Remote repositories are not supported.

For troubleshooting information, see the TracSubversion page.

Git

Git 1.5.6 or later is supported. More information is available on the TracGit page.

Other Version Control Systems

Support for other version control systems is provided via third-party plugins. See PluginList#VersionControlSystems and VersionControlSystem.

Web Server

A web server is optional because Trac is shipped with a server included, see the Running the Standalone Server section below.

Alternatively you can configure Trac to run in any of the following environments:

Other Python Packages

Attention: The available versions of these dependencies are not necessarily interchangeable, so please pay attention to the version numbers. If you are having trouble getting Trac to work, please double-check all the dependencies before asking for help on the MailingList or IrcChannel.

Please refer to the documentation of these packages to find out how they are best installed. In addition, most of the platform-specific instructions also describe the installation of the dependencies. Keep in mind however that the information there probably concern older versions of Trac than the one you're installing.

Installing Trac

The trac-admin command-line tool, used to create and maintain project environments, as well as the tracd standalone server are installed along with Trac. There are several methods for installing Trac.

It is assumed throughout this guide that you have elevated permissions as the root user or by prefixing commands with sudo. The umask 0002 should be used for a typical installation on a Unix-based platform.

Using pip

pip is the modern Python package manager and is included in Python 2.7.9 and later. Use get-pip.py to install pip for an earlier version of Python.

$ pip install Trac

pip will automatically resolve the required dependencies (Jinja2 and setuptools) and download the latest packages from pypi.org.

You can also install directly from a source package. You can obtain the source in a tar or zip from the TracDownload page. After extracting the archive, change to the directory containing setup.py and run:

$ pip install .

pip supports numerous other install mechanisms. It can be passed the URL of an archive or other download location. Here are some examples:

  • Install the latest stable version from a zip archive:

    $ pip install https://download.edgewall.org/trac/Trac-latest.zip

  • Install the latest development version from a tar archive:

    $ pip install https://download.edgewall.org/trac/Trac-latest-dev.tar.gz

  • Install the unreleased 1.2-stable from subversion:

    $ pip install svn+https://svn.edgewall.org/repos/trac/branches/1.2-stable

  • Install the latest development preview (not recommended for production installs):

    $ pip install --find-links=https://trac.edgewall.org/wiki/TracDownload Trac

The optional dependencies can be installed from PyPI using pip:

$ pip install babel docutils pygments textile

The optional dependencies can alternatively be specified using the extras keys in the setup file:

$ pip install Trac[babel,rest,pygments,textile]

rest is the extra that installs the docutils dependency.

Include mysql or psycopg2-binary in the list if using the MySQL or PostgreSQL database.

Additionally, you can install several Trac plugins from PyPI (listed here) using pip. See TracPlugins for more information.

Using installer

On Windows, Trac can be installed using the exe installers available on the TracDownload page. Installers are available for the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Python. Make sure to use the installer that matches the architecture of your Python installation.

Using package manager

Trac may be available in your platform's package repository. However, your package manager may not provide the latest release of Trac.

Creating a Project Environment

A Trac environment is the backend where Trac stores information like wiki pages, tickets, reports, settings, etc. An environment is a directory that contains a human-readable configuration file, and other files and directories.

A new environment is created using trac-admin:

$ trac-admin /path/to/myproject initenv

trac-admin will prompt you for the information it needs to create the environment: the name of the project and the database connection string. If you're not sure what to specify for any of these options, just press <Enter> to use the default value.

Using the default database connection string will always work as long as you have SQLite installed. For the other database backends you should plan ahead and already have a database ready to use at this point.

Also note that the values you specify here can be changed later using TracAdmin or directly editing the conf/trac.ini configuration file.

Finally, make sure the user account under which the web front-end runs will have write permissions to the environment directory and all the files inside. This will be the case if you run trac-admin ... initenv as this user. If not, you should set the correct user afterwards. For example on Linux, with the web server running as user apache and group apache, enter:

$ chown -R apache:apache /path/to/myproject

The actual username and groupname of the apache server may not be exactly apache, and are specified in the Apache configuration file by the directives User and Group (if Apache httpd is what you use).

Important

Warning: Please only use ASCII-characters for account name and project path, unicode characters are not supported there.

Deploying Trac

Setuptools Warning: If the version of your setuptools is in the range 5.4 through 5.6, the environment variable PKG_RESOURCES_CACHE_ZIP_MANIFESTS must be set in order to avoid significant performance degradation.

If running tracd, the environment variable can be set system-wide or for just the user that runs the tracd process. There are several ways to accomplish this in addition to what is discussed here, and depending on the distribution of your OS.

To be effective system-wide a shell script with the export statement may be added to /etc/profile.d. To be effective for a user session the export statement may be added to ~/.profile.

export PKG_RESOURCES_CACHE_ZIP_MANIFESTS=1

Alternatively, the variable can be set in the shell before executing tracd:

$ PKG_RESOURCES_CACHE_ZIP_MANIFESTS=1 tracd --port 8000 /path/to/myproject

If running the Apache web server, Ubuntu/Debian users should add the export statement to /etc/apache2/envvars. RedHat/CentOS/Fedora should can add the export statement to /etc/sysconfig/httpd.

Running the Standalone Server

After having created a Trac environment, you can easily try the web interface by running the standalone server tracd:

$ tracd --port 8000 /path/to/myproject

Then, open a browser and visit http://localhost:8000/. You should get a simple listing of all environments that tracd knows about. Follow the link to the environment you just created, and you should see Trac in action. If you only plan on managing a single project with Trac you can have the standalone server skip the environment list by starting it like this:

$ tracd -s --port 8000 /path/to/myproject

Running Trac on a Web Server

Trac provides various options for connecting to a "real" web server:

Trac also supports AJP which may be your choice if you want to connect to IIS. Other deployment scenarios are possible: nginx, uwsgi, Isapi-wsgi etc.

Generating the Trac cgi-bin directory

Application scripts for CGI, FastCGI and mod-wsgi can be generated using the trac-admin deploy command:

deploy <directory>

    Extract static resources from Trac and all plugins

Grant the web server execution right on scripts in the cgi-bin directory.

For example, the following yields a typical directory structure:

$ mkdir -p /var/trac
$ trac-admin /var/trac/<project> initenv
$ trac-admin /var/trac/<project> deploy /var/www
$ ls /var/www
cgi-bin htdocs
$ chmod ugo+x /var/www/cgi-bin/*

Mapping Static Resources

Without additional configuration, Trac will handle requests for static resources such as stylesheets and images. For anything other than a TracStandalone deployment, this is not optimal as the web server can be set up to directly serve the static resources. For CGI setup, this is highly undesirable as it causes abysmal performance.

Web servers such as Apache allow you to create Aliases to resources, giving them a virtual URL that doesn't necessarily reflect their location on the file system. We can map requests for static resources directly to directories on the file system, to avoid Trac processing the requests.

There are two primary URL paths for static resources: /chrome/common and /chrome/site. Plugins can add their own resources, usually accessible at the /chrome/<plugin> path.

A single /chrome alias can used if the static resources are extracted for all plugins. This means that the deploy command (discussed in the previous section) must be executed after installing or updating a plugin that provides static resources, or after modifying resources in the $env/htdocs directory. This is probably appropriate for most installations but may not be what you want if, for example, you wish to upload plugins through the Plugins administration page.

The deploy command creates an htdocs directory with:

  • common/ - the static resources of Trac
  • site/ - a copy of the environment's htdocs/ directory
  • shared - the static resources shared by multiple Trac environments, with a location defined by the [inherit] htdocs_dir option
  • <plugin>/ - one directory for each resource directory provided by the plugins enabled for this environment

The example that follows will create a single /chrome alias. If that isn't the correct approach for your installation you simply need to create more specific aliases:

Alias /trac/chrome/common /path/to/trac/htdocs/common
Alias /trac/chrome/site /path/to/trac/htdocs/site
Alias /trac/chrome/shared /path/to/trac/htdocs/shared
Alias /trac/chrome/<plugin> /path/to/trac/htdocs/<plugin>
Example: Apache and ScriptAlias

Assuming the deployment has been done this way:

$ trac-admin /var/trac/<project> deploy /var/www

Add the following snippet to Apache configuration, changing paths to match your deployment. The snippet must be placed before the ScriptAlias or WSGIScriptAlias directive, because those directives map all requests to the Trac application:

Alias /trac/chrome /path/to/trac/htdocs

<Directory "/path/to/www/trac/htdocs">
  # For Apache 2.2
  <IfModule !mod_authz_core.c>
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
  </IfModule>
  # For Apache 2.4
  <IfModule mod_authz_core.c>
    Require all granted
  </IfModule>
</Directory>

If using mod_python, add this too, otherwise the alias will be ignored:

<Location "/trac/chrome/common">
  SetHandler None
</Location>

Alternatively, if you wish to serve static resources directly from your project's htdocs directory rather than the location to which the files are extracted with the deploy command, you can configure Apache to serve those resources. Again, put this before the ScriptAlias or WSGIScriptAlias for the .*cgi scripts, and adjust names and locations to match your installation:

Alias /trac/chrome/site /path/to/projectenv/htdocs

<Directory "/path/to/projectenv/htdocs">
  # For Apache 2.2
  <IfModule !mod_authz_core.c>
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
  </IfModule>
  # For Apache 2.4
  <IfModule mod_authz_core.c>
    Require all granted
  </IfModule>
</Directory>

Another alternative to aliasing /trac/chrome/common is having Trac generate direct links for those static resources (and only those), using the trac.htdocs_location configuration setting:

[trac]
htdocs_location = http://static.example.org/trac-common/

Note that this makes it easy to have a dedicated domain serve those static resources, preferentially cookie-less.

Of course, you still need to make the Trac htdocs/common directory available through the web server at the specified URL, for example by copying (or linking) the directory into the document root of the web server:

$ ln -s /path/to/trac/htdocs/common /var/www/static.example.org/trac-common

Setting up the Plugin Cache

Some Python plugins need to be extracted to a cache directory. By default the cache resides in the home directory of the current user. When running Trac on a Web Server as a dedicated user (which is highly recommended) who has no home directory, this might prevent the plugins from starting. To override the cache location you can set the PYTHON_EGG_CACHE environment variable. Refer to your server documentation for detailed instructions on how to set environment variables.

Configuring Authentication

Trac uses HTTP authentication. You'll need to configure your webserver to request authentication when the .../login URL is hit (the virtual path of the "login" button). Trac will automatically pick the REMOTE_USER variable up after you provide your credentials. Therefore, all user management goes through your web server configuration. Please consult the documentation of your web server for more info.

The process of adding, removing, and configuring user accounts for authentication depends on the specific way you run Trac.

Please refer to one of the following sections:

TracAuthenticationIntroduction also contains some useful information for beginners.

Granting admin rights to the admin user

Grant admin rights to user admin:

$ trac-admin /path/to/myproject permission add admin TRAC_ADMIN

This user will have an Admin navigation item that directs to pages for administering your Trac project.

Configuring Trac

Configuration options are documented on the TracIni page.

TracRepositoryAdmin provides information on configuring version control repositories for your project.

In addition to the optional version control backends, Trac provides several optional features that are disabled by default:

Using Trac

Once you have your Trac site up and running, you should be able to create tickets, view the timeline, browse your version control repository if configured, etc.

Keep in mind that anonymous (not logged in) users can by default access only a few of the features, in particular they will have a read-only access to the resources. You will need to configure authentication and grant additional permissions to authenticated users to see the full set of features.

Enjoy!

The Trac Team

See also: TracInstallPlatforms, TracGuide, TracUpgrade