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Version: nightly

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.

uv is the preferred tool for handling all Python virtual environments and 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).

Cap'n Proto is required for serialization schema compilation. The required version is specified in the capnp-version file in the repository root. Ubuntu's default package is typically too old, so you may need to install from source (see below).

info

NautilusTrader must compile and run on Linux, macOS, and Windows. Please keep portability in mind (use std::path::Path, avoid Bash-isms in shell scripts, etc.).

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 command to install development and test dependencies:
uv sync --active --all-groups --all-extras

or

make install

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

make install-debug
  1. Set up the pre-commit hook which will then run automatically at commit:
pre-commit install

Before opening a pull-request run the formatting and lint suite locally so that CI passes on the first attempt:

make format
make pre-commit

Make sure the Rust compiler reports zero errors – broken builds slow everyone down.

  1. Required for Rust/PyO3 (Linux and macOS): When using Python installed via uv on Linux or macOS, set the following environment variables:
# Add to your shell configuration (e.g., ~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc)

# Linux only: Set the library path for the Python interpreter
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$(python -c 'import sys; print(sys.base_prefix)')/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH"

# Set the Python executable path for PyO3
export PYO3_PYTHON=$(pwd)/.venv/bin/python

# Set the Python home path (required for Rust tests)
export PYTHONHOME=$(python -c "import sys; print(sys.base_prefix)")
note

The LD_LIBRARY_PATH export is Linux-specific and not needed on macOS or Windows.

  • PYO3_PYTHON tells PyO3 which Python interpreter to use, reducing unnecessary recompilation.
  • PYTHONHOME is required when running make cargo-test with a uv-installed Python. Without it, tests that depend on PyO3 may fail to locate the Python runtime.

To verify your environment is configured correctly:

python -c "import sys; print('Python:', sys.executable, sys.version)"
echo "PYO3_PYTHON: $PYO3_PYTHON"
echo "PYTHONHOME: $PYTHONHOME"

Builds​

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

uv run --no-sync 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

Cap'n Proto​

Cap'n Proto is required for serialization schema compilation. The required version is defined in the capnp-version file in the repository root.

On macOS, install via Homebrew:

brew install capnp

Verify the installed version matches capnp-version. If Homebrew provides an older version, install from source using the Linux instructions below.

On Ubuntu/Linux, the default package is typically too old. Install from source:

CAPNP_VERSION=$(cat capnp-version)
cd ~
wget https://capnproto.org/capnproto-c++-${CAPNP_VERSION}.tar.gz
tar xzf capnproto-c++-${CAPNP_VERSION}.tar.gz
cd capnproto-c++-${CAPNP_VERSION}
./configure
make -j$(nproc)
sudo make install
sudo ldconfig

Verify installation:

capnp --version

On Windows, install via Chocolatey:

choco install capnproto

Verify the installed version matches capnp-version. If Chocolatey provides an older version, see the Cap'n Proto installation guide for alternative installation methods.

Faster builds​

The cranelift backends reduces build time significantly for dev, testing and IDE checks. However, cranelift is available on the nightly toolchain and needs extra configuration. Install the nightly toolchain

rustup install nightly
rustup override set nightly
rustup component add rust-analyzer # install nightly lsp
rustup override set stable # reset to stable

Activate the nightly feature and use "cranelift" backend for dev and testing profiles in workspace Cargo.toml. You can apply the below patch using git apply <patch>. You can remove it using git apply -R <patch> before pushing changes.

warning

Do not commit these changes. The cranelift patch is for local development only and will break CI if pushed.

diff --git a/Cargo.toml b/Cargo.toml
index 62b78cd8d0..beb0800211 100644
--- a/Cargo.toml
+++ b/Cargo.toml
@@ -1,3 +1,6 @@
+# This line needs to come before anything else in Cargo.toml
+cargo-features = ["codegen-backend"]
+
 [workspace]
 resolver = "2"
 members = [
@@ -140,6 +143,7 @@ lto = false
 panic = "unwind"
 incremental = true
 codegen-units = 256
+codegen-backend = "cranelift"

 [profile.test]
 opt-level = 0
@@ -150,11 +154,13 @@ strip = false
 lto = false
 incremental = true
 codegen-units = 256
+codegen-backend = "cranelift"

 [profile.nextest]
 inherits = "test"
 debug = false # Improves compile times
 strip = "debuginfo" # Improves compile times
+codegen-backend = "cranelift"

 [profile.release]
 opt-level = 3

Pass RUSTUP_TOOLCHAIN=nightly when running make build-debug like commands and include it in all rust analyzer settings for faster builds and IDE checks.

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.

warning

On Linux systems with GNOME desktop, the nautilus command typically refers to the GNOME file manager (/usr/bin/nautilus). After installing the NautilusTrader CLI, you may need to ensure the Cargo binary takes precedence by either:

  • Adding an alias to your shell config: alias nautilus="$HOME/.cargo/bin/nautilus"
  • Using the full path: ~/.cargo/bin/nautilus
  • Ensuring ~/.cargo/bin appears before /usr/bin in your PATH
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_USERNAME 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.

Rust analyzer settings​

Rust analyzer is a popular language server for Rust and has integrations for many IDEs. It is recommended to configure rust analyzer to have same environment variables as make build-debug for faster compile times. Below tested configurations for VSCode and Astro Nvim are provided. For more information see PR or rust analyzer config docs.

VSCode​

You can add the following settings to your VSCode settings.json file:

    "rust-analyzer.restartServerOnConfigChange": true,
    "rust-analyzer.linkedProjects": [
        "Cargo.toml"
    ],
    "rust-analyzer.cargo.features": "all",
    "rust-analyzer.check.workspace": false,
    "rust-analyzer.check.extraEnv": {
        "VIRTUAL_ENV": "<path-to-your-virtual-environment>/.venv",
        "CC": "clang",
        "CXX": "clang++"
    },
    "rust-analyzer.cargo.extraEnv": {
        "VIRTUAL_ENV": "<path-to-your-virtual-environment>/.venv",
        "CC": "clang",
        "CXX": "clang++"
    },
    "rust-analyzer.runnables.extraEnv": {
        "VIRTUAL_ENV": "<path-to-your-virtual-environment>/.venv",
        "CC": "clang",
        "CXX": "clang++"
    },
    "rust-analyzer.check.features": "all",
    "rust-analyzer.testExplorer": true

Astro Nvim (Neovim + AstroLSP)​

You can add the following to your astro lsp config file:

    config = {
      rust_analyzer = {
        settings = {
          ["rust-analyzer"] = {
            restartServerOnConfigChange = true,
            linkedProjects = { "Cargo.toml" },
            cargo = {
              features = "all",
              extraEnv = {
                VIRTUAL_ENV = "<path-to-your-virtual-environment>/.venv",
                CC = "clang",
                CXX = "clang++",
              },
            },
            check = {
              workspace = false,
              command = "check",
              features = "all",
              extraEnv = {
                VIRTUAL_ENV = "<path-to-your-virtual-environment>/.venv",
                CC = "clang",
                CXX = "clang++",
              },
            },
            runnables = {
              extraEnv = {
                VIRTUAL_ENV = "<path-to-your-virtual-environment>/.venv",
                CC = "clang",
                CXX = "clang++",
              },
            },
            testExplorer = true,
          },
        },
      },
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