As several people have mentioned they had trouble starting with the rewrite branch, I decided to do a step-by-step log of installing the rewrite in a way that is good for developing -- this means you are able to edit the framework files, while not inflicting any changes on other users (or other bots you run!) of the system. By using setup.py develop, edits you make to the framework will immediately be used (no need to setup.py install them), but only within the virtualenv.

This is the windows version of my earlier email

I do not run python on windows, so this is a tutorial that starts with installing python. It's a bit rougher than the unix one, as I did not want to spend too much time on it.

1. Install python 2.7

http://python.org/ftp/python/2.7.1/python-2.7.1.msi (do not use the 64-bit version, due to http://bugs.python.org/issue6792 )

2. Install Setuptools

http://pypi.python.org/pypi/setuptools#files

3. Install Virtualenv

start/run: cmd

c:\Python27\Scripts\easy_install.exe virtualenv

4. create a virtualenv for pwb

C:\Users\valhallasw>c:\Python27\Scripts\virtualenv.exe pywikibot

New python executable in pywikibot\Scripts\python.exe

Installing setuptools.....................done.

5. Go to C:\Users\valhallasw\pywikibot and use tortoisesvn to get the rewrite

6. create a shortcut to cmd /k c:\users\valhallasw\pywikibot\scripts\activate.bat

with working path C:\Users\valhallasw\pywikibot\rewrite

7. Use the shortcut. You now have a new cmd.exe window

8. python setup.py develop

Your default user directory is "C:\Users\valhallasw\AppData\Roaming\pywikibot"

How to proceed? ([K]eep [c]hange)

change, to c:\users\valhallasw\pywikibot\conf\

Answer 'y' to the warning prompt (not 'yes')

Do you want to copy files: y

[note: I copied my unix user-config.py to c:\users\valhallasw\pywikibot]

Path to existing wikipedia.py? C:\Users\valhallasw\pywikibot

NOTE: user-config.py already exists in the directory

Create user-fixes.py file? ([y]es, [N]o) n

(pywikibot) C:\Users\valhallasw\pywikibot\rewrite>echo SET PYWIKIBOT2_DIR=c:\users\valhallasw\pywikibot\conf>> ..\Scripts\activate.bat

(DON'T put a space between f and >>!)

Close the window, and

9. Use the shortcut from (7) again

You should now have a cmd.exe with a working pywikibot setup!

(pywikibot) C:\Users\valhallasw\pywikibot\rewrite\scripts>python touch.py Gebruiker:Valhallasw

Retrieving 1 pages from wikipedia:nl.

Page [[Gebruiker:Valhallasw]] saved

NOTE: you must use 'python' in front of the script name, or python will not find the pywikibot directory.

Good luck!

Merlijn