Installation on Windows

Crossbar.io is a Python application, with a few additional dependencies. Since Windows does not have a builtin package management for applications, installing Crossbar.io requires installing some of these dependencies manually.

There are two possibilities to install Crossbar.io:

  • [Installation using the PyPi] (Python Package Index) - quick install of the latest release version

  • Installation from Source - building everything (but Python) from sources

Basic Installation

Installing the Dependencies

Crossbar.io is a Python application. In addition to Python, setup requires the PyWin32 additions, pip (a Python package manager) and the Microsoft Visual C++ compiler for Python 2.7.

  1. Download and install Python for Windows 2.7.x - 32-bit even on 64-bit systems (strongly recommended)

  2. Add C:\Python27\ and C:\Python27\Scripts to your PATH (‘Control Panel’ - ‘System’ - ‘Change Settings’ - ‘Advanced’ - ‘Environment Variables’ - ‘Path’ is part of the system variables)

  3. Download and install PyWin32 - 32-bit version for Python 2.7 - ‘win32’

  4. If you’re on any Python version previous to 2.7.9, you need to install pip. Download the `get-pip script <https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py>`__ and run this (works from Windows Explorer or the download dialog of your browser).

  5. Download and install the Microsoft Visual C++ compiler for Python 2.7

Installing Crossbar.io

Now you can install Crossbar.io by opening a command shell and doing

pip install crossbar

This installs Crossbar.io from the Python Package Index.

To verify that the installation was successful, in the shell do

crossbar version

which should output something like:

C:\Users\IEUser>crossbar version
     __  __  __  __  __  __      __     __
    /  `|__)/  \/__`/__`|__) /\ |__)  |/  \
    \__,|  \\__/.__/.__/|__)/~~\|  \. |\__/

 Crossbar.io        : 0.13.0
   Autobahn         : 0.13.1 (with JSON, MessagePack, CBOR)
   Twisted          : 16.1.1-IOCPReactor
   LMDB             : 0.89/lmdb-0.9.18
   Python           : 2.7.11/CPython
 OS                 : Windows-7-6.1.7601-SP1
 Machine            : x86

Installation from Source

Recently, Microsoft has published a compiler package specifically for building Python binary extensions on Windows which simplifies matters a lot.

  1. Download and install the compiler package.

  2. Open “Visual C++ 2008 32-bit Command Prompt” from the “Microsoft Visual C++ Compiler Package for Python 2.7” program folder

  3. Change to the crossbar/crossbar directory and type pip install -e .[all]

Running Crossbar.io from the Git shell

Git shell on Windows no longer shows any logging output for Crossbar.io if this is started regularly (crossbar start).

To get logging output, do

winpty crossbar start

(The above only applies to Git shell - not the regular Windows command shell and Powershell.)