This section provides information about options for installing and starting the Open edX platform. There is one production-like installation option, referred to as Native, and a pair of development environment installation options which install the Open edX software using Docker.
These installation options require an understanding of the following items.
Basic terminal usage. If you are using a Mac computer, see Introduction to the Mac OS X Command Line.
Diagnosing and fixing failures may involve many different technologies and skills. It will help to know these things.
The basics of how Python web applications are built, installed, and deployed.
How to manage a Linux system, including supervisor.
The basics of configuration management and automation. We use Ansible to automate the installation process.
The Native installation installs the Open edX software on your own Ubuntu 16.04 machine in a production-like configuration. Details are at the Open edX Native Installation page on the edX wiki.
Devstack is a deployment of the Open edX platform within a set of Docker containers designed for local development. Running the Open edX platform locally allows you to discover and fix system configuration issues early in development.
Devstack simplifies certain production settings to make development more
convenient. For example, nginx and gunicorn are disabled in Devstack;
Devstack uses Django’s runserver instead.
You can install the Open edX developer stack (just known as Devstack) or the Open edX analytics developer stack (Analytics Devstack or just Analyticstack).
To run either Devstack or Analytics Devstack, see the devstack repository.
You can run Devstack or Analytics Devstack on Linux or macOS. See the Docker downloads page for information about the operating systems and architectures on which you can run Docker. Devstack using Docker for Windows has not been tested and it is not supported. For more information about Docker, see the Docker documentation.
Some users might want to develop Analytics features on their instance of the Open edX platform. Because of the large number of dependencies needed to develop extensions to Analytics, edX has created a modified version of Devstack that provides the services and tools needed to modify the Open edX Analytics Pipeline.
For information on running Analytics Stack, see the Getting Started on Analytics document in the devstack repository.
Insights and the Analytics Data API are currently not included in Analytics Devstack.