Installation

If you are unfamiliar with python or the command line, instead use the bundled app installer as demonstrated in Beginner Setup.

Install with uv

uv is the newest and fastest way to manage python libraries. It is very easy to install, and simplifies environment manage, but requires some minimal input to the command line. Install uv from here. Then, the simplest way to install napari-ndev:

uv tool install napari-ndev

Alternatively, download the full opinionated package, which includes non-BSD3 licensed libraries with:

uv tool install napari-ndev[all]

Then, you can easily open napari with the command line every time by just typing:

napari-ndev

The tool version of napari-ndev effectively runs as an alias for napari -w napari-ndev and opens the nDev App upon launch. With this method, additional plugins installed via the plugin menu persist between each call to napari-ndev

To update a tool with uv:

uv tool upgrade napari-ndev

Install with pip

napari-ndev is a pure Python package, and can be installed with [pip] (and it is recommended to do so in a managed environment):

pip install napari-ndev

The easiest way to get started with napari-ndev is to install all the optional dependencies (see note below) with:

pip install napari-ndev[all]

Afterwards, you can call from the command line (in the same environment) napari-ndev to open napari with the nDev App open on launch.

Optional Libraries

napari-ndev is most useful when interacting with some other napari plugins (e.g. napari-assistant) and can read additional filetypes. A few extra BSD3 compatible napari-plugins may be installed with [pip]:

pip install napari-ndev[extras]

napari-ndev can optionally use GPL-3 licensed libraries to enhance its functionality, but are not required. If you choose to install and use these optional dependencies, you must comply with the GPL-3 license terms. The main functional improvement is from some bioio libraries to support extra image formats, including czi and lif files. These libraries can be installed with [pip]:

pip install napari-ndev[gpl-extras]

In addition, you may need to install specific bioio readers to support your specific image, such as bioio-czi and bioio-lif (included in [gpl-extras]) or bioio-bioformats (which needs conda installed).

Development Libraries

For development use the [dev] optional libraries to verify your changes, which includes the [docs] and [testing] optional groups. However, the Github-CI will test pull requests with [testing] only.

Development with uv

uv can be a useful tool for building as similar an environment as possible across systems. To do so, navigate in your terminal to the napari-ndev source directory. --python sets the minimum python version. --no-workspace prevents discovering parent workspaces. Then:

uv init --python 3.11 --no-workspace
uv sync

You may use uv to set a certain python version, e.g.:

uv pin python 3.11

To use uv to install extras (like with napari-ndev[dev]), use:

uv sync --extra dev

You may also test the tool version of uv during development with:

uv install tool .

You can also test with tox in parallel (via tox-uv) with:

tox - p auto