# Install

plesty-lib needs Python 3.12 or later. Add it to your project with
[uv](https://docs.astral.sh/uv/) or pip:

```bash
uv add plesty-lib            # or: pip install plesty-lib
```

The basic install is enough to write and use devices, experiments and analyzers
(see [Quick Start](quickstart/index.md)). It brings the packages those need:
`numpy` for arrays, `pyvisa`, `pyserial` and `pyusb` to reach instruments, `pyzmq`
to use them over the network, and `pyyaml` to read settings files.

## Extras

Some features need large packages that most computers running plesty-lib do not
want. A computer that only runs an instrument, for example, has no use for a GUI
toolkit. These features are **extras**: you install them only by naming them in
square brackets.

| Extra | Installs | For |
|---|---|---|
| `gui` | `pyside6`, `pyqtgraph` | windows: device control panels and the viewer that plots a running measurement |
| `record` | `pillow`, `imageio`, `imageio-ffmpeg` | saving a measurement's plots as a video (MP4, or GIF with Pillow alone) |
| `report` | `latex2mathml` | showing equations in reports opened as HTML; without it they appear as LaTeX source |
| `fit` | `scipy` | fitting peaks in a spectrum (`SpectrumFit`) |
| `hdf5` | `h5py` | converting saved results into one HDF5 file (`plesty.lib.data.io.convert_to_hdf5`) |

Name one or several:

```bash
uv add "plesty-lib[gui]"
uv add "plesty-lib[gui,record]"
pip install "plesty-lib[gui,record]"
```

If you use a feature without its extra, plesty-lib stops with an error that names
the extra to install.

## Tools for publishing a module

To publish your own device, experiment or analyzer as a PLESTY module, you also
need plesty-sdk, PLESTY's developer tool. It creates the files a new module starts
with and checks a module against the PLESTY standard before it is published. You
only need it while developing, not to run anything:

```bash
uv add --dev plesty-sdk
```