Updated src/README.md to include instructions for using NVM and Python virtual environments for local development. Added requirements.txt to install required Python utils. Added pnpm as a dev dependency.

Author: schrodingersket

.gitignore

@@ -95,6 +95,8 @@ src/smc-hub/landing
 
 src/smc_sagews/smc_sagews.egg-info/*
 src/smc_sagews/build/*
+src/smc_pyutil/smc_pyutil.egg-info/*
+src/smc_pyutil/build/*
 .eggs
 logs
 pids
@@ -144,4 +146,7 @@ src/packages/next/lib/software-inventory/*.json
 
 src/compute/compute/dev/conf*
 src/g
-src/go
+src/go
+
+# Python virtual environment
+venv

src/.nvmrc

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+lts/hydrogen

src/README.md

@@ -12,18 +12,57 @@ CoCalc is a pretty large and complicated project, and it will only work with the
 . /cocalc/nvm/nvm.sh
 ```
 
-- Make sure to[install the newest version of pnpm as well;](https://pnpm.io/installation) one way to do that is as follows:
+Alternatively, if you are already using [Node Version Manager](https://github.com/nvm-sh/nvm), you can simply run the
+following command to use a version of Node guaranteed to work with this project:
+
+```sh
+~/cocalc/src$ nvm install && nvm use
+```
+
+_Note that `nvm install` is only required the first time you run this command or when CoCalc's Node version changes_.
+
+- Make sure to [install the newest version of pnpm as well;](https://pnpm.io/installation) one way to do that is as follows:
 
 ```sh
 npm install -g pnpm
 ```
 
-- Python: You must have python3 installed with the pyyaml package, so `import yaml` works. Do `pip3 install pyyaml` if not.
+Alternatively, if you do not wish to install `pnpm` globally, you can run `npm install` to install it as a dev 
+dependency.
+
+**Python virtual environment**
+
+Some features of CoCalc (e.g., file creation) require local Python modules to be installed. To create a [Python virtual 
+environment](https://docs.python.org/3/library/venv.html) from which to run these modules, run (from the `src` 
+directory):
+
+```sh
+~/cocalc/src$ python3 -m venv venv
+```
+
+To activate the virtual environment, run
+
+```sh
+~/cocalc/src$ source ./venv/bin/activate
+```
+
+To install required dependencies, run
+
+```sh
+(venv) ~/cocalc/src$ pip install -r requirements.txt
+```
+
+**You must have your virtual environment activated when running the CoCalc Hub (via `pnpm hub`)!** If, on the other
+hand, you prefer that development packages be installed globally, you can jump directly to the above `pip install` 
+command outside the context of a virtual environment.
 
 ## Initial Build
 
 Launch the install and build **for doing development:** 
 
+**Note**: If you installed `pnpm` locally (instead of globally), simply run `npm run` in place of `pnpm` to execute
+these commands via [NPM run scripts](https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/v10/using-npm/scripts).
+
 ```sh
 ~/cocalc/src$ pnpm make-dev
 ```

src/package.json

@@ -38,5 +38,8 @@
   "bugs": {
     "url": "https://github.com/sagemathinc/cocalc/issues"
   },
-  "homepage": "https://github.com/sagemathinc/cocalc"
+  "homepage": "https://github.com/sagemathinc/cocalc",
+  "devDependencies": {
+    "pnpm": "^8.10.2"
+  }
 }

src/requirements.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,4 @@
+pyyaml==6.0.1
+
+./smc_pyutil
+./smc_sagews