Windows installation

How to install PeARS on Windows (instructions tested on 8 and 10)

1. Clone PeARS repo.

Use a git software,for instance Git for Windows. Click "clone". Fill in Source Path / URL with https://github.com/PeARSearch/PeARS-orchard.git. Enter a destination path, for instance C:\Users\Alice\PeARS-orchard.

2. Setting up the environment

Install Python 3 from python.org by downloading the "executable installer" for your version of Windows. Run the installer. The installer's default is not to set the Path variable on installation, so click that option to make sure Path is set.

2.1 Set up virtualenv

pip comes with all recent versions of Python so you don't need to install that separately.

do "Command prompt" (e.g., via Cortana) and in this type:

 pip3 install virtualenv

 pip3 install virtualenvwrapper-win

Then create a new virtualenv for PeARS and activate it:

 cd PeARS-orchard

 virtualenv env 

Note: you may have to give the full path to your Python install here, for instance:

 virtualenv -p C:\Python34\python.exe env

Once your virtualenv is created, do:

 cd env/Scripts

 activate

 cd ../.. 

2.2 Install the build dependencies

 pip3 install -r requirements.txt

2.3 Unpack the semantic space.

Using File Explorer, navigate to PeARS-orchard/app/static/spaces and extract english.dm from the .zip file. Note that on many systems, the default behaviour is to put the extracted file in a separate directory - if this happens, you'll need to move it so you end up with

PeARS-orchard/app/static/spaces/english.dm

3. Running the PeARS search engine

In your Command Prompt window

 python run.py

If you get a Windows firewall alert, just close the window without allowing any access to anything.

Go to your browser and enter localhost:8080 in the Search Bar. You should find PeARS running there. You don't have any pages indexed yet, so go to the F.A.Q. page (link at the top of the page) and follow the short instructions to get you going!