Installing and uninstalling frePPLe is straightforward, and follows the normal Windows conventions.
After accepting the license agreement, the installer will guide you to select:
- The components to install
- The installation directory
- The license file
- The language and database connection parameters
- Whether or not to register the server as a service
Depending on the selected options the installation requires between 30 and 60 MB of disk space.
The installer has been tested on Windows XP, Windows 7 and Windows 8.
- Prior to the installation, it is recommended (but not absolutely required…) to uninstall any previous version.
- Start the installer
- Accept the license agreement
FrePPLe is released with a dual license: you can choose either to apply the GNU Affero General Public License (aka AGPL) or to buy a commercial license.
See this section of the documentation for more details.
- Select the type of installation.
If you have administrator rights on your computer, the installer will allow you choose to install frePPLe for your account only or for anybody logging in on the machine.
If you don’t have administrator rights, this screen will automatically be skipped. Nothing to worry about. - Select the installation directory.
A default location is selected depending on the installation type. - Select the license file.
The enterprise edition requires a license file to be activated. You get the license file when you register your copy on the support section of the website.
To use the community edition you can leave this field empty. A default license file will be installed. - Select the components to install.
- Select the installation parameters.
Two types of parameters are specified during the installation:- Default language for the user interface
- Database connection parameters
FrePPLe supports the MysSQL, PostgreSQL 8, SQLite and Oracle 11g databases. The installer will detect which of those you have installed on you computer and allow you to choose one. The SQLite database is included with frePPLe, allowing you to get started very quickly.
For MySQL, Oracle 11g and PostgreSQL 8 you need to specify the database name, the database user and its password, and the host and port number of the database engine. The database and the database user have to be created by the database administrator. The frePPLe database tables will be created when you first start the server.
Make sure the database user has been created and has been granted sufficient privileges to create tables and indexes.For SQLite you only need to specify the database name.
You selections are saved in the file freppledb/settings.py. The file can later be edited with a text editor when required.
- Installation
During the actual installation you can see the list of installed files. - Finish
At the end of the installation you can choose to start the server immediately.
For a test or development installation it is recommended to run the server from the console.
For an installation in production mode AND you have administrator rights on your computer, you can chose to register and start a service instead.
- Start the server
FrePPLe’s user interface is web-based. You need to start the web server first in one of the following ways:- Either it was already started at the last step of the installation process
- Select “Run Server” from the program menu to start the web server in a console window.
If you’re new to frePPLe, this method is preferred. - Select “Start Service” from the program menu to run the server as a windows server. This option is available only when you choose the option to register a service during the installation.
- Start the service from the windows service manager. Also this option is only valid if you choose to register the service during installation.
Point your browser to the URL shown in the server window, and you’re up and running!
- Optional extra step: Install GraphViz
To display a graphic representation of the supply chain, frePPLe uses graphViz: see this page for an example.
To enable this functionality you need to install the GraphViz package from http://www.graphviz.org.
It is possible to have multiple installations in parallel on the same computer. They obviously need to be installed in different directories, and you need to set the environment variable FREPPLE_HOME to point to the directory with the version you want to run. Only one of them can be registered as a service.