Environment Setup

For development we recommend using the PyCharm Professional edition IDE, as it interprets Cython syntax. Alternatively, you could use Visual Studio Code with a Cython extension.

pyenv is the recommended tool for handling Python installations and virtual environments.

poetry is the preferred tool for handling all Python package and dev dependencies.

pre-commit is used to automatically run various checks, auto-formatters and linting tools at commit.

NautilusTrader uses increasingly more Rust, so Rust should be installed on your system as well (installation guide).

Setup

The following steps are for UNIX-like systems, and only need to be completed once.

1. Follow the installation guide to set up the project with a modification to the final poetry command:

   poetry install

2. Set up the pre-commit hook which will then run automatically at commit:

   pre-commit install

3. In case of large recompiles for small changes, configure the PYO3_PYTHON variable in nautilus_trader/.cargo/config.toml with the path to the Python interpreter in the poetry managed environment. This is primarily useful for Rust developers working on core and experience frequent recompiles from IDE/rust analyzer based cargo check.

   poetry shell
   PYTHON_PATH=$(which python)
   echo -e "\n[env]\nPYO3_PYTHON = \"$PYTHON_PATH\"" >> .cargo/config.toml

   Since .cargo/config.toml is a tracked file, configure git to skip local modifications to it with git update-index --skip-worktree .cargo/config.toml. Git will still pull remote modifications. To push modifications track local modifications using git update-index --no-skip-worktree .cargo/config.toml.

   The git hack is needed till local cargo config feature is merged.

Builds

Following any changes to .rs, .pyx or .pxd files, you can re-compile by running:

poetry run python build.py

or

make build

If you're developing and iterating frequently, then compiling in debug mode is often sufficient and significantly faster than a fully optimized build. To compile in debug mode, use:

make build-debug

Services

You can use docker-compose.yml file located in .docker directory to bootstrap the Nautilus working environment. This will start the following services:

docker-compose up -d

If you only want specific services running (like postgres for example), you can start them with command:

docker-compose up -d postgres

Used services are:

• postgres: Postgres database with root user POSTRES_USER which defaults to postgres, POSTGRES_PASSWORD which defaults to pass and POSTGRES_DB which defaults to postgres
• redis: Redis server
• pgadmin: PgAdmin4 for database management and administration

info

Please use this as development environment only. For production, use a proper and more secure setup.

After the services has been started, you must log in with psql cli to create nautilus Postgres database. To do that you can run, and type POSTGRES_PASSWORD from docker service setup

psql -h localhost -p 5432 -U postgres

After you have logged in as postgres administrator, run CREATE DATABASE command with target db name (we use nautilus):

psql (16.2, server 15.2 (Debian 15.2-1.pgdg110+1))
Type "help" for help.

postgres=# CREATE DATABASE nautilus;
CREATE DATABASE

Nautilus CLI Developer Guide

Introduction

The Nautilus CLI is a command-line interface tool for interacting with the NautilusTrader ecosystem. It offers commands for managing the PostgreSQL database and handling various trading operations.

note

The Nautilus CLI command is only supported on UNIX-like systems.

Install

You can install the Nautilus CLI using the below Makefile target, which leverages cargo install under the hood. This will place the nautilus binary in your system's PATH, assuming Rust's cargo is properly configured.

make install-cli

Commands

You can run nautilus --help to view the CLI structure and available command groups:

Database

These commands handle bootstrapping the PostgreSQL database. To use them, you need to provide the correct connection configuration, either through command-line arguments or a .env file located in the root directory or the current working directory.

• --host or POSTGRES_HOST for the database host
• --port or POSTGRES_PORT for the database port
• --user or POSTGRES_USER for the root administrator (typically the postgres user)
• --password or POSTGRES_PASSWORD for the root administrator's password
• --database or POSTGRES_DATABASE for both the database name and the new user with privileges to that database (e.g., if you provide nautilus as the value, a new user named nautilus will be created with the password from POSTGRES_PASSWORD, and the nautilus database will be bootstrapped with this user as the owner).

Example of .env file

POSTGRES_HOST=localhost
POSTGRES_PORT=5432
POSTGRES_USERNAME=postgres
POSTGRES_PASSWORD=pass
POSTGRES_DATABASE=nautilus

List of commands are:

1. nautilus database init: Will bootstrap schema, roles and all sql files located in schema root directory (like tables.sql)
2. nautilus database drop: Will drop all tables, roles and data in target Postgres database