Getting Started with Development

Setting up a development environment

If you already have a working ACQ4 installation from the user guide (see Installation), you can use that as-is for development.

If you would like to check out ACQ4 from git manually, you will need a python 3.12 environment. These instructions demonstrate using conda, but any valid python environment should do.

git clone https://github.com/acq4/acq4.git
cd acq4
conda create --name acq4 python=3.12
conda activate acq4
pip install -e .[dev]
Other optional dependencies can be specified (separated by commas) in addition to dev:

  • hardware - for hardware support (NIDAQmx, Sensapex, etc)

  • ml-models - for computer vision features

  • analysis - for some legacy analysis tools

  • docs - for building the documentation

See pyproject.toml for what those dependencies are.

Starting ACQ4

python -m acq4 -x

Look through the other –help options for more ways to start ACQ4.

Running Tests

# Run all tests
pytest

# Run specific test file
pytest acq4/tests/test_geometry.py

# Run specific test module
pytest acq4/devices/tests/test_OdorDelivery.py

# Run tests with verbose output
pytest -v

Technology Notes

  • The UI and acquisition stacks are Qt-heavy with many scientific and ML dependencies.

  • Import Qt from the unified wrapper: from acq4.util import Qt for cross-backend compatibility.

  • PyQtGraph is used extensively for UI components, especially data visualization.