About¶

Germ provides a lightweight framework for building Python applications. By abstracting the main thread and configuration logic, Germ allows you to simply focus on building your domain logic. Integrating with Germ is as simple as creating a package that organizes your code into some logical sub packages and declaring them in your application config.

• Free software: MIT license
• Documentation: https://germ.readthedocs.io.

Rationale¶

My goal with Germ is simple: provide a reusable framework for building Python applications. I’ve built several distributed Python applications and have ended up largely copying the base framework between them. This has led to a couple frustrations:

1. I hate copy-pasting code. As I make improvements in one codebase I have to backport

those changes to the other codebase... or just let the old code rot.

2. I waste time tweaking the base code that I could be spending on my problem domain.

I started using Flask for a few projects and fell in love. I began moving my Bottle & Django applications over and realized that the Flask philosophy could work for me.

Why not build a framework that handles the very basics and allows(encourages) building extra functionality on top as plugins?

Design¶

While Flask is a huge inspiration, I don’t intend to simply copy Flasks design. I am slightly more opinionated about the structure of plugins and how they integrate into Germ.

With that in mind, you won’t write an application and import Germ. Instead you would write your functionality as a plugin and tell Germ to run it.

Stable release¶

To install Germ, run this command in your terminal:

$ pip install germ

This is the preferred method to install Germ, as it will always install the most recent stable release.

If you don’t have pip installed, this Python installation guide can guide you through the process.

From sources¶

The sources for Germ can be downloaded from the Github repo.

You can either clone the public repository:

$ git clone git://github.com/jesseops/germ

Or download the tarball:

$ curl  -OL https://github.com/jesseops/germ/tarball/master

Once you have a copy of the source, you can install it with:

$ python setup.py install

Overview¶

A Germ plugin

Types of Contributions¶

Get Started!¶

Ready to contribute? Here’s how to set up germ for local development.

1. Fork the germ repo on GitHub.

2. Clone your fork locally:

   $ git clone git@github.com:your_name_here/germ.git
   

3. Install your local copy into a virtualenv. Assuming you have virtualenvwrapper installed, this is how you set up your fork for local development:

   $ mkvirtualenv germ
   $ cd germ/
   $ python setup.py develop
   

4. Create a branch for local development:

   $ git checkout -b name-of-your-bugfix-or-feature
   

   Now you can make your changes locally.

5. When you’re done making changes, check that your changes pass flake8 and the tests, including testing other Python versions with tox:

   $ flake8 germ tests
   $ python setup.py test or py.test
   $ tox
   

   To get flake8 and tox, just pip install them into your virtualenv.

6. Commit your changes and push your branch to GitHub:

   $ git add .
   $ git commit -m "Your detailed description of your changes."
   $ git push origin name-of-your-bugfix-or-feature
   

7. Submit a pull request through the GitHub website.

Pull Request Guidelines¶

Before you submit a pull request, check that it meets these guidelines:

1. The pull request should include tests.
2. If the pull request adds functionality, the docs should be updated. Put your new functionality into a function with a docstring, and add the feature to the list in README.rst.
3. The pull request should work for Python 2.6, 2.7, 3.3, 3.4 and 3.5, and for PyPy. Check https://travis-ci.org/jesseops/germ/pull_requests and make sure that the tests pass for all supported Python versions.

Tips¶

To run a subset of tests:

$ python -m unittest tests.test_germ