So what do you do? That depends on which operating system you're running. We've split this document up to address the different methods, so find the section for your operating system and continue from there. First let's start with the parts that are common to all OSes. ### # COMMON: ### First things first: Supybot *requires* Python 2.3. There ain't no getting around it. If you're a Python developer, you probably know how superior 2.3 is to previous incarnations. If you're not, just think about the difference between a bowl of plain vanilla ice cream and a banana split. Or something like that. Either way, *We're* Python developers and we like banana splits. So, be sure to install python2.3 before continuing. You can get it from http://www.python.org/ ### # UNIX/Linux/*BSD: ### If you're installing Python using your distributor's packages, you may need a python-dev package installed, too. If you don't have a /usr/lib/python2.3/distutils directory (assuming /usr/lib/python2.3 is where your Python libs are installed), then you will need a python-dev package. After you extract Supybot and cd into the supybot directory just created, you'll want to run (as root) "python setup.py install". This will install Supybot globally. If you need to install locally for whatever reason, see the addendum near the end of this document. You'll then have several new programs installed where Python scripts are normally installed on your system (/usr/bin or /usr/local/bin are common on UNIX systems). The two that might be of particular interest to you, the new user, are "supybot" and "supybot-wizard". The former ("supybot") is the script to run an actual bot; the latter ("supybot-wizard") is an in-depth wizard that provides a nice user interface for creating a registry file for your bot. So after running supybot-wizard, you've got a nice registry file handy. If you're not satisfied with your answers to any of the questions you were asked, feel free to run the program again until you're satisfied with all your answers. Once you're satisfied, though, run the "supybot" program with the registry file you created as an argument. This will start the bot; unless you turned off logging to stdout, you'll see some nice log messages describing what the bot is doing at any particular moment; it may pause for a significant amount of time after saying "Connecting to ..." while the server tries to check its ident. ### # Windows: ### Now that you have Python installed, open up a command prompt. The easiest way to do this is to open the run dialog (Programs -> run) and type "cmd" (for Windows 2000/XP/2003) or "command" (for Windows 9x). In order to reduce the amount of typing you need to do, I suggest adding Python's directory to your path. If you installed Python using the default settings, you would then do the following in the command prompt (otherwise change the path to match your settings): set PATH=%PATH%;C:\Python23\ You should now be able to type "python" to start the Python interpreter (CTRL-Z and Return to exit). Now that that's setup, you'll want to cd into the directory that was created when you unzipped Supybot; I'll assume you unzipped it to C:\Supybot for these instructions. From C:\Supybot, run "python setup.py install". This will install Supybot under C:\Python23\. If you want to install Supybot to a non-default location, see the addendum near the end of this document. You will now have several new programs installed in C:\Python23\Scripts\. The two that might be of particular interest to you, the new user, are "supybot" and "supybot-wizard". The former ("supybot") is the script to run an actual bot; the latter ("supybot-wizard") is an in-depth wizard that provides a nice user interface for creating a registry file for your bot. Now you will want to run "python C:\Python23\Scripts\supybot-wizard" to generate a registry file for your bot. So after running supybot-wizard, you've got a nice registry file handy. If you're not satisfied with your answers to any of the questions you were asked, feel free to run the program again until you're satisfied with all your answers. Once you're satisfied, though, run "python C:\Python23\Scripts\supybot botname.conf". This will start the bot; unless you turned off logging to stdout, you'll see some nice log messages describing what the bot is doing at any particular moment; it may pause for a significant amount of time after saying "Connecting to ..." while the server tries to check its ident. For more information and help on how to use Supybot, checkout docs/GETTING_STARTED. Our forums (http://forums.supybot.org/) may also be of use, especially the "Tips and Tricks" topic under "Supybot User Discussion". ### # Addenda ### Local installs: See this forum post: http://tinyurl.com/2tb37