Bodhi Linux setup for software development

This blog post is about my experience setting up Bodhi Linux (BL for short hereafter) for software development for AWS using Python and AWS CDK.

Items to setup

1. Git
2. Python
3. AWS CLI
4. npm (includes nodejs)
5. AWS CDK
6. Configure AWS

tldr;

All the commands for a new PC setup.

git config --global user.name "Zhixian"
git config --global user.email "zhixian@hotmail.com"
sudo apt install git-gui
sudo apt install gitk

sudo apt install python-is-python3
sudo apt install python3-venv
curl "https://awscli.amazonaws.com/awscli-exe-linux-x86_64.zip" -o "awscliv2.zip"
unzip awscliv2.zip
sudo ./aws/install

sudo apt install npm
npm install -g aws-cdk

aws configure
aws s3 ls

Git

BL comes pre-installed with git.

So I just have to configure it with my name (Zhixian) and my email (zhixian@hotmail.com).

git config --global user.name "Zhixian"
git config --global user.email "zhixian@hotmail.com"

However, only the git command-line interface (CLI) tools are installed. The other commonly see graphical user interface (GUI) tools ‘git-gui’ and ‘gitk’ are not installed. Since I do use those those tools, I installed them via the following ‘apt’ command:

sudo apt install git-gui
sudo apt install gitk

Aside: Actually, the command sudo apt install git-gui is sufficient.
It would installs ‘gitk’. One of the nice side effects of installing these GUI tools is that it would also install ‘tcl’ language interpreter and the ‘tk’ graphical toolkit library that ‘tcl’ needs to create user interfaces.

Python

BL does installed with Python3. However, we commonly invoke the Python using the command ‘python’. To install the package that maps ‘python3’ to ‘python’, run the following apt commands:

sudo apt install python-is-python3

For Python development, it is common to use a virtual environment via the ‘venv’ module. However, the module installed in BL is missing another module call ‘ensurepip’. So get ‘venv’ working we need to install the ‘python-venv’ module using the following command:

sudo apt install python3-venv

AWS CLI

To install the latest version of AWS CLI tools, run the following commands:

curl "https://awscli.amazonaws.com/awscli-exe-linux-x86_64.zip" -o "awscliv2.zip"
unzip awscliv2.zip
sudo ./aws/install

npm (includes nodejs)

Installing the node package manager (npm) will also install the Nodejs interpreter.

Strictly speaking, this is not needed if you are not going to use AWS CDK.

Having said that, it is fairly common to see tools installed written in Nodejs and installed via npm (just like AWS CDK). So its probably a good idea to install it.

npm can be installed via the following command:

sudo apt install npm

AWS CDK

The AWS CDK is installed using npm command.

So you need to execute the previous step.

To install the AWS CDK, run the following command:

sudo npm install -g aws-cdk

Configure AWS

The last step is to run the configure AWS. I’m assuming you have the AWS Access ID and AWS Secret Access Key.

To configure, run the following command:

aws configure

And then finally to see if your AWS CLI is working:

aws s3 ls

If you reach this step, you would be good to go to develop stuff for AWS using Python.