deb-python-cassandra-driver/docs/installation.rst

Installation

Supported Platforms

Python 2.6 and 2.7 are supported. Both CPython (the standard Python implementation) and PyPy are supported and tested against.

Linux, OSX, and Windows are supported.

Support for Python 3 is planned.

Installation through pip

pip is the suggested tool for installing packages. It will handle installing all python dependencies for the driver at the same time as the driver itself. To install the driver:

pip install cassandra-driver

You can use pip install --pre cassandra-driver if you need to install a beta version.

Manual Installation

You can always install the driver directly from a source checkout or tarball. When installing manually, ensure the python dependencies are already installed. You can find the list of dependencies in requirements.txt.

Once the dependencies are installed, simply run:

python setup.py install

(Optional) Non-python Dependencies

The driver has several optional features that have non-Python dependencies.

C Extensions

By default, two C extensions are compiled: one that adds support for token-aware routing with the Murmur3Partitioner, and one that allows you to use libev for the event loop, which improves performance.

When installing manually through setup.py, you can disable both with the --no-extensions option, or selectively disable one or the other with --no-murmur3 and --no-libev.

To compile the extenions, ensure that GCC and the Python headers are available.

On Ubuntu and Debian, this can be accomplished by running:

$ sudo apt-get install gcc python-dev

On RedHat and RedHat-based systems like CentOS and Fedora:

$ sudo yum install gcc python-devel

On OS X, homebrew installations of Python should provide the necessary headers.

libev support

The driver currently uses Python's asyncore module for its default event loop. For better performance, libev is also supported through a C extension.

If you're on Linux, you should be able to install libev through a package manager. For example, on Debian/Ubuntu:

$ sudo apt-get install libev4 libev-dev

On RHEL/CentOS/Fedora:

$ sudo yum install libev libev-devel

If you're on Mac OS X, you should be able to install libev through Homebrew. For example, on Mac OS X:

$ brew install libev

If successful, you should be able to build and install the extension (just using setup.py build or setup.py install) and then use the libev event loop by doing the following:

>>> from cassandra.io.libevreactor import LibevConnection
>>> from cassandra.cluster import Cluster

>>> cluster = Cluster()
>>> cluster.connection_class = LibevConnection
>>> session = cluster.connect()

Compression Support

Compression can optionally be used for communication between the driver and Cassandra. There are currently two supported compression algorithms: snappy (in Cassandra 1.2+) and LZ4 (only in Cassandra 2.0+). If either is available for the driver and Cassandra also supports it, it will be used automatically.

For lz4 support:

$ pip install lz4

For snappy support:

$ pip install python-snappy

(If using a Debian Linux derivative such as Ubuntu, it may be easier to just run apt-get install python-snappy.)

Setting SSL

Andrew Mussey has published a thorough guide on Using SSL with the DataStax Python driver.