System requirements

Sopel 7 is designed to run with Python 2.7 or 3.3+. (Note: The next major version, Sopel 8, will require at least Python 3.7+.)

While all development and “official” tests run on Linux, Sopel should probably work in other POSIX-compliant OSes, and seems to more-or-less work on Windows.

Sopel itself has few external dependencies, besides Python. There are a couple, though:

• dnspython - used internally to enhance connection reliability
• requests - used to maintain compatibility with old plugins that use deprecated features of Sopel’s web utility API
• SQLAlchemy - used for database cross-compatibility (SQLite, MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc.)

Most of Sopel’s dependencies are only needed for specific plugins. Below is a listing of some of these. If you don’t want to use a specific plugin, you do not need its dependencies.

• geoip2 - ip. You will also need the appropriate database files, which Sopel will download automatically if they are not found.
• ipaddress - url (only needed on Python 2)
• praw - reddit
• pytz - remind, clock, seen, tell
• requests - used by nearly every plugin that needs to talk to a web service. This includes both built-in and third-party plugins; you probably should just install this one.
• xmltodict - bugzilla, search

Most of these packages can be installed through the pip command, or via your Linux distribution’s software repository. If you install Sopel through pip or your distribution’s package manager (on Fedora or Arch), all of these dependencies will be installed for you.