Developers instructions

C++ natlink.pyd file

This is the core file of Natlink, and connects python grammar files with Dragon. Together with an installation program inno setup, this module is kept in the natlink repository.

Please refer to the

README file in the project repository [https://github.com/dictation-toolbox/natlink](https://github.com/dictation-toolbox/natlink) for more information about natlink.
Documentation about [Natlink](https://natlink.readthedocs.io)

Python modules

The python modules of Natlink, are in this repository ‘natlinkcore’.

When you want to get involved in the development of the python code of this project, note that the code is in several repositories, natlinkcore, dragonfly(2), unimacro, vocola(2), dtactions and others.

natlinkcore, this repository, contains:

the “core” modules, like loader, config, natlinkstatus
the config program, natlinkconfig_gui, natlinkconfig_cli (as fallback, but also usable in batch mode)
tests
sample grammar files
the original documents about Natlink by Joel Gould, written in 1999

How to get and change the code

This procedure is more or less the same for the repositories

natlinkcore
vocola2
unimacro
dtactions

Installing from PyPi

You can install from [The Python Package Index (PyPI)](https://pypi.org/) with

pip install natlinkcore

Test Framework

Tests use the [pytest](https://docs.pytest.org/) framework. For developers, if you are developing on the project, please add tests for any new features or bug fixes.

Mandy Python IDEs such as [Visual Studio Code](https://code.visualstudio.com/) have build in support for test frameworks and make it easy to run and debug pytest. see [Visual Studio Code for testing](https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/python/testing).

Building the Python Package Locally

The build happens through a powershell script. You don’t have to know much powershell. The powershell script runs the tests using [pytest](https://docs.pytest.org/).

The package is built with [Flit](https://flit.pypa.io/). The package will be produced in dist/nalinkcore-x.y.tar.gz. To install it pip install dist/natlinkcore-x.y.tar.gz replacing x.y with the version numbers.

To start a powershell from the command prompt, type powershell.

To build the package:

build_natlinkcore from powershell, which will run the the tests in natlinkcore/test, then build the the package.

To publish the package to [The Python Package Index (PyPI)](https://pypi.org/)

publish_natlinkcore from powershell.

You can use flit to install the package locally into site-packages using symbolic links, so you can test changes without reinstalling:

flit install –symlink

Publishing checklist

Before you bump the version number in __init__.py and publish: - Check the pyroject.toml file for package dependancies. Do you need a specfic or newer version of a dependancy such as dtactions? Then add or update the version # requirement in dtactions. - don’t publish if the tests are failing. The publish_natlinkcore will prevent this, please don’t work around it. - When you have changes, you can send a PR (Pull Request) in github, the natlinkcore repository.