Installing netlab from GitHub

If you want to change the netlab source code, need the latest development version, or want to contribute to the project, clone the netlab GitHub repository (everyone else should install the Python package).

• Clone the netlab Github repository with git clone https://github.com/ipspace/netlab.

• Switch to the development branch with git checkout dev, or select the desired release with git checkout release_*. Use git tag to get the list of release tags.

• Within the netlab directory, install prerequisite Python packages with python3 -m pip install -r requirements.txt[1].

• If you want to contribute to the project, install additional Python packages with python3 -m pip install -r requirements-dev.txt.

• Add the netlab directory to your PATH with source setup.sh command executed within the netlab directory. Alternatively, you could install the networklab package from the local source (and create the netlab command in the ~/.local/bin directory) with the pip3 install -e . command[2].

• (Optional) Use the netlab install command to install Ubuntu utilities, containerlab, libvirt/KVM, or Ansible.

Next step: create the lab environment

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[1]

You will have to use a Python virtual environment or add the --break-system-packages flag when running pip3 on recent Linux distributions.

[2]

This command will break on Ubuntu 22.04 unless you upgrade pip and setuptools packages with pip3 install --upgrade pip setuptools.