Installation

First of all you need to install a recent version of Python 3. Please visit the python website download and install Python 3. Python should be added to the PATH environment variable.

A great Python IDE is PyCharm. PyCharm can be used for free also for professional projects. Please visit the PyCharm download page, download and install PyCharm.

Alternatively you can install the Jetbrains Toolbox which lets you easily install and update PyCharm and other tools. To get the Toolbox please visit the Jetbrains Toolbox download page.

If you use PyCharm, you can create a new project which will automatically create a new virtual environment.

If not, you can use the uv tool which is a great cross-platform tool to initialize and manage a virtual environment. Follow the installation instructions to install uv if you didn’t already, then create the new environment.

mkdir htf-demo-project
cd htf-demo-project
uv init
uv venv
source .venv/bin/activate

Then, to install and update the htf-demo package, run inside a virtual environment the following

uv pip install -i https://pypi.hilster.io htf-demo  # When using uv
pip install -i https://pypi.hilster.io htf-demo  # When being already in a venv

Note

Got issues with the installation? You might be behind a proxy server, please read Proxy Server and following paragraphs.

htf-demo uses the community edition by default to easily get you started.

To create a new directory which will contain the demo files and setup it, run the following

mkdir htf-demo
cd htf-demo
demo init .

This will copy all demo scripts into your project directory. Simply open the folder in PyCharm (or your IDE of choice) to start, or simply use the command line.

The htf demo is now ready to use and you can proceed to the next section, namely discovering the core functionalities.

Proxy Server

If you are behind a proxy server, you need to set the “https_proxy” environment variable before running pip.

set https_proxy=https://username:password@proxyserver:port  # On Windows
export https_proxy=https://username:password@proxyserver:port  # On Linux

Please replace username, password, proxy server and port with appropriate values meeting your networking environment.

SSL Verification

In some circumstances it might be necessary to disable SSL verification. To do this simply set the environment variable HLM_INSECURE to value “1”.

set HLM_INSECURE=1  # On Windows
export HLM_INSECURE=1  # On Linux

Demo-license Activation

If you’d like to checkout features not included in the community-edition like Signed-reports, HART and Modbus you have to contact us to let us create a demo-license for you.

To activate the demo-license run

hlm purge
hlm activate <your-demo-license-key>

In case you got issues with SSL Verification before, add the option --insecure to hlm activate.

Support

If you have any questions, please contact us via e-mail to support@hilster.io.

We hope that you will like HILSTER Testing Framework and the demo we provided to you.

We highly appreciate your feedback and we will contact you in about two weeks to talk about HILSTER Testing Framework and your experiences.