Merge 5646dda into ca2df82

CONTRIBUTE.rst

@@ -33,6 +33,9 @@ Developer overview
 
       git checkout -b bugfix-for-issue-1480
 
+   * For more information on how to set up a development environment, refer to
+     the :doc:`setup guide <setup>` for developers
+
    * Commit locally as you progress (``git add`` and ``git commit``)
 
 3. To submit your contribution:

doc/developer/index.rst

@@ -7,4 +7,5 @@ Developer Guide
    :maxdepth: 2
 
    contribute
+   setup
    gitwash/index

doc/developer/setup.rst

@@ -0,0 +1,60 @@
+.. _setup:
+
+.. highlight:: bash
+
+===============================================
+ Guide to setting up a development environment
+===============================================
+
+This guide explains how to set up a clean development environment using
+`Anaconda <https://anaconda.org/>`__ virtual environments and ``virtualenv``
+environments.
+
+Anaconda
+========
+
+First, ensure that Anaconda is installed, then fork and clone NetworkX and check
+out a development branch. Now create a new Conda environment, in this case
+called ``networkx_dev``::
+
+   conda create -n networkx_dev python=3
+
+If you use Jupyter notebooks to run code during development, instead run::
+
+   conda create -n networkx_dev python=3 jupyter nb_conda
+
+Once the environment is created, activate it::
+
+   source activate networkx_dev
+
+Install an editable version of NetworkX and its required packages::
+
+   pip install -e .
+   pip install -r requirements.txt
+
+N.B. ``gdal`` may need to be installed before installing the required packages
+e.g.::
+
+================ ============================================================
+Debian / Ubuntu  ``sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntugis/ubuntugis-unstable``
+                 ``sudo apt-get update``
+                 ``sudo apt-get install gdal``
+Fedora           ``sudo dnf install gdal``
+Windows          Download and install a `windows binary
+                 <http://www.gisinternals.com/release.php>`__
+OS X             ``brew install gdal``
+================ ============================================================
+
+If you use Jupyter notebooks to run code during development, it is very handy to
+have the following in the first cell (N.B. these Juypter notebooks should not be
+committed to the NetworkX repository)::
+
+   %load_ext autoreload
+   %autoreload 2
+   import networkx
+
+Once the changes have been tested, committed and pushed, the Conda environment
+can be removed by::
+
+   source deactivate networkx_dev
+   conda env remove -n networkx_dev