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Development setup

An AEA consists of packages . When developing, it helps to be able to save packages in a local package registry, rather than pushing them to remote registry. This guide helps you set up a local package registry and configure the working directory for development.

There are two ways to write code for an AEA:

  1. independent of a concrete AEA project, write individual packages

  2. from within an AEA project, write packages for that AEA

Approach 1

To prepare a directory (henceforth working directory) for development with the AEA framework you can take a few steps:

  • Either, manually:

    • Ensure you start with an empty working directory to avoid any unnecessary side effects.

    • In your working directory, create an empty folder called packages. This folder will act as the local registry for packages.

    • In your working directory, create a .env file with the constant PYTHONPATH=$PYTHONPATH:path_to_packages_dir where path_to_packages_dir is the path to the packages folder in your working directory.

  • Or, automated:

    • Fork our template repo for AEA development. Then clone it to your machine.

  • Depending on your editor, you might take further steps:

    • VS Code: The Python Extension in VS Code can be configured to include additional paths in the Python path. The extension has a setting for python.envFile which specifies the path to a file containing environment variable definitions. The default is set to "python.envFile": "${workspaceFolder}/.env". Provide the path to the .env file in the above settings. In the .env file, add the PYTHONPATH constant defined above. Then close VS Code and re-open it for the settings to take effect.

After developing a package, you can add it to an AEA project in the working directory (e.g. aea create AGENT_NAME && cd AGENT_NAME && aea add --local PACKAGE_TYPE PUBLIC_ID will create a new AEA project AGENT_NAME and add the package of type PACKAGE_TYPE with public id PUBLIC_ID to it.)

Approach 2

It is also possible to develop directly in an AEA project:

  • Prepare a directory (henceforth working directory) for development.

  • Create a new project aea create AGENT_NAME && cd AGENT_NAME

  • Scaffold a new package aea scaffold --with-symlinks PACKAGE_TYPE PACKAGE_NAME. This will create the package scaffold under the directory {PACKAGE_TYPE}s and create symlinks to ensure package import paths line up with the folder structure. The symlinks are not needed to run the AEA. They are purely for your IDE.

  • In your working directory, create a .env file with the constant PYTHONPATH=$PYTHONPATH:path_to_project_dir where path_to_project_dir is the path to the AEA project contained in your working directory.

  • Depending on your editor, you might take further steps:

    • VS Code: The Python Extension in VS Code can be configured to include additional paths in the Python path. The extension has a setting for python.envFile which specifies the path to a file containing environment variable definitions. The default is set to "python.envFile": "${workspaceFolder}/.env". Provide the path to the .env file in the above settings. In the .env file, add the PYTHONPATH constant defined above. Then close VS Code and re-open it for the settings to take effect.

General advice

This advice partially overlaps with the previous two sections:

  • When developing a specific AEA, it might be helpful to publish/push or fetch/add from local registry. From your working directory/AEA project, simply execute the usual AEA CLI commands. The CLI will first search in the packages directory, then in the remote AEA registry. You can explicitly point to local registry by providing flag --local or --remote to only point to remote registry (see here for more details on CLI commands).

  • When working on an AEA, it may help to provide a symbolic link to the packages directory, so that the import paths are detected by your editor. Simply create an empty file with touch packages in your AEA project, then create a symbolic link to the packages directory with ln -s ../packages packages.

  • Alternatively, it can help to provide symbolic links within an AEA to align import paths with folder structure. Simply create an empty file with touch packages in your AEA project, then create a symbolic link to ln -s vendor packages.

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