Trac Installation Guide

The Trac web-based project management tool is implemented as a server side cgi-program. Trac is written in the Python programming language and store it's data in a sqlite database.

Dependencies

The following dependencies have to be installed:

• ​Python, version >= 2.1.
• ​subversion, version >= 0.37.
• ​pysqlite, version >= 0.4.3 (>= 0.5 for better performance)
• ​ClearSilver, version >= 0.9.3
• A CGI-capable web server (only tested with Apache)

Installing Trac

	$ python ./setup.py install

This will byte-compile the python source code and install it in the site-packages directory of your python installation. The directories templates, htdocs and wiki-default will be copied into $prefix/share/trac/ .

Initializing the database

Trac stores wiki pages, tickets and other information in a sqlite database. Sqlite databases are just ordinary files on the hard drive, no database server is required.

A new trac database can be created like this:

	$ trac-admin /path/to/mydatabase.db initdb

NOTE: The database file have to be located in a directory where the web server user has write permission to both the file and the directory.

[wiki:TracAdmin trac-admin] will ask you where your subversion repository is located and where it can find the trac templates directory (the default value should be fine).

Configuring Apache

copy (or symlink) "trac/cgi-bin/trac.cgi" to you web servers /cgi-bin/ directory. Of course you can configure apache to use the "trac/cgi-bin/" directory directly if you like.

Finally adjust the filenames and add this config snippet to your web server:

Alias /trac/ "/where/you/put/trac/htdocs/"
# Trac need to know where the database is located
<Location "/cgi-bin/trac.cgi">
	SetEnv TRAC_DB "/somewhere/myproject.db"
</Location>

# You need this to allow users to authenticate
<Location "/cgi-bin/trac.cgi/login">
	AuthType Basic
	AuthName "trac"
	AuthUserFile /somewhere/trac.htpasswd
	Require valid-user
</location>

What next?

You should now have a working Trac installation at:

​http://<yourhostname>/cgi-bin/trac.cgi

There you should be able to browse your subversion repository, create tickets, view the timeline etc. Keep in mind that anonymous users (before logging in) are only able to see/use a subset of all the features provided by Trac. Please read TracPermissions on how to grant additional privileges to authenticated users.

Enjoy!

See also: TracGuide, TracOnNetBsd, TracOnOsx