Requirements

  • Python 2.x >= 2.5 (Python 3.x will be supported soon)
  • setuptools >= 0.6c6
  • nosetests (for the test suite only)

With easy_install

If you don't already have easy_install available you'll want to download and run the ez_setup.py script:

$ curl -O http://peak.telecommunity.com/dist/ez_setup.py
$ sudo python ez_setup.py -U setuptools

To install or upgrade to the latest released version of Gunicorn:

$ sudo easy_install -U gunicorn

Note

There is a limited support version of Gunicorn that is compatible with Python 2.4. This fork is managed by Randall Leeds and can be found here on github. To install this version you must specify the full url to something like pip. This hasn't been tested wtih easy_install just yet:

$ pip install -f http://github.com/tilgovi/gunicorn/tarball/py24 gunicorn

From Source

You can install Gunicorn from source just as you would install any other Python package. Gunicorn uses setuptools which will automatically fetch all dependencies (including setuptools itself).

You can download a tarball of the latest sources from GitHub Downloads or fetch them with git:

# Using git:
$ git clone git://github.com/benoitc/gunicorn.git
$ cd gunicorn

# Or using a tarball:
$ wget http://github.com/benoitc/gunicorn/tarball/master -o gunicorn.tar.gz
$ tar -xvzf gunicorn.tar.gz
$ cd gunicorn-$HASH/

# Install
$ sudo python setup.py install

If you've cloned the git repository, its highly recommended that you use the develop command which will allow you to use Gunicorn from the source directory. This will allow you to keep up to date with development on GitHub as well as make changes to the source:

$ python setup.py develop

Async Workers

You may also want to install Eventlet or Gevent if you expect that your application code may need to pause for extended periods of time during request processing. Check out the design docs for more information on when you'll want to consider one of the alternate worker types.

$ easy_install -U greenlet  # Required for both
$ easy_install -U eventlet  # For eventlet workers
$ easy_install -U gevent    # For gevent workers

Note

If installing greenlet fails you probably need to install the Python headers. These headers are available in most package managers. On Ubuntu the package name for apt-get is python-dev.

Gevent also requires that libevent 1.4.x or 2.0.4 is installed. This could be a more recent version than what is available in your package manager. If Gevent fails to build even with libevent installed, this is the most likely reason.

Debian GNU/Linux

If you are using Debian GNU/Linux is is recommended that you use system packages to install Gunicorn. This has a number of advantages:

  • Zero-effort installation: Automatically starts multiple Gunicorn instances based on configurations defined in /etc/gunicorn.d.
  • Sensible default locations for logs (/var/log/gunicorn). Logs can be automatically rotated and compressed using logrotate.
  • Improved security: Can easily run each Gunicorn instance with a dedicated UNIX user/group.
  • Sensible upgrade path: Upgrades to newer versions result in less downtime, handle conflicting changes in configuration options, and can be quickly rolled back in case of incompatibility. The package can also be purged entirely from the system in seconds.

Stable ("squeeze")

The version of Gunicorn in the Debian "stable" distribution is 0.10.0 (July 2010). It is not recommended that you use this version.

However, you can use the most recent version by using Debian Backports. First, copy the following line to your /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://backports.debian.org/debian-backports squeeze-backports main

Then, update your local package lists:

$ sudo apt-get update

You can then install the latest version using:

$ sudo apt-get -t squeeze-backports install gunicorn

Testing ("wheezy") / Unstable ("sid")

"wheezy" and "sid" contain the latest released version of Gunicorn. You can install it in the usual way:

$ sudo apt-get install gunicorn

Ubuntu

If you use Ubuntu karmic, you can update your system with packages from our PPA by adding ppa:bchesneau/gunicorn to your system's Software Sources.

Or this PPA can be added to your system manually by copying the lines below and adding them to your system's software sources:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/bchesneau/gunicorn/ubuntu karmic main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/bchesneau/gunicorn/ubuntu karmic main

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