# merou

**Repository Path**: mirrors_dropbox/merou

## Basic Information

- **Project Name**: merou
- **Description**: Permission management service
- **Primary Language**: Unknown
- **License**: Apache-2.0
- **Default Branch**: master
- **Homepage**: None
- **GVP Project**: No

## Statistics

- **Stars**: 0
- **Forks**: 0
- **Created**: 2020-09-24
- **Last Updated**: 2026-02-08

## Categories & Tags

**Categories**: Uncategorized

**Tags**: None

## README

=====
merou
=====

.. image:: https://travis-ci.com/dropbox/merou.svg?branch=master
    :alt: Build Status
    :target: https://app.travis-ci.com/github/dropbox/merou

.. image:: https://img.shields.io/badge/code%20style-black-000000.svg
    :alt: Code Style: Black
    :target: https://github.com/ambv/black

Deprecation
-----------

The Merou/Grouper project has been deprecated. You may continue to use and maintain forks of the project, but the Dropbox team will no longer contribute to this repository.

Description
-----------

Merou is an application to allow users to create and manage memberships to
their own groups.  It requires Python 3.7 or later.

**Note**: We renamed the project to avoid `a namespace conflict
<https://github.com/Internet2/grouper>`_, but it isn't reflected in the
codebase yet.

Installation
------------

Standard Python package installation instructions apply. You will need
Python 3 and development headers for MySQL.

On Debian-based systems:

.. code:: bash

    apt-get install libmysqlclient-dev libpython3-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev libssl-dev python3-pip
    pip3 install -e git+https://github.com/dropbox/merou#egg=grouper

Next you need to configure grouper to find a SQL-style backing database
and stand up processes to serve the read-write web UI and read-only
programmatic API. There's an sample configuration file, suitable for
local development and testing, in ``config/dev.yaml``.


Running a Test instance
-----------------------

Grouper runs behind a reverse proxy that handles authentication and so
expects a valid, authenticated, user account. I've included a test proxy
for running on development instances.

Creating a development instance:

.. code:: bash

    export PYTHONPATH=$(pwd)
    export GROUPER_SETTINGS=$(pwd)/config/dev.yaml

    # Setup the database.
    bin/grouper-ctl sync_db

    ## You can either run all the various servers and the reverse-proxy
    ## via a helper script:
    tools/run-dev --user $USER@example.com

    ## Or separately:
    # Run the development reverse proxy
    bin/grouper-ctl -vv user_proxy $USER@example.com

    # Run the frontend server
    bin/grouper-fe -vv

    # Run the graph/api server
    bin/grouper-api -vv


Setting up the first groups and permissions
-------------------------------------------

In order to bootstrap your new Grouper environment, you will want to
create a user for yourself and add it to the ``grouper-administrators``
group.

.. code:: bash

    export PYTHONPATH=$(pwd)
    export GROUPER_SETTINGS=$(pwd)/config/dev.yaml

    bin/grouper-ctl -vv\
        user create $USER@example.com

    # Give the user administrative access to the Grouper instance
    bin/grouper-ctl -vv \
        group add_member --owner grouper-administrators $USER@example.com


Running the tests
-----------------

Some tests require a recent (>= 2.31) version of chromium-driver, which
can be installed via apt or Homebrew:

.. code:: bash

    apt install chromium-driver

(This may be called chromium-chromedriver in older versions.)  Once
chromium-driver is installed, the tests can be run using pytest:

.. code:: bash

    pip install -r requirements.txt
    pip install -r requirements-dev.txt
    pytest
    flake8
    mypy .

If you see test failures and suspect incompatible library versions (e.g.,
an existing tornado install at a different major release than that in our
`requirements.txt`), then you can try using a virtual environment.

.. code:: bash

    $ virtualenv ~/merou-venv -p /usr/bin/python3
    $ source ~/merou-venv/bin/activate
    (merou-venv) $ pip install -r requirements.txt
    (merou-venv) $ pip install -r requirements-dev.txt
    (merou-venv) $ pytest
    (merou-venv) $ deactivate
    $

All Merou code is formatted with black, which is installed by the
`requirements-dev.txt` requirements file for Python 3. After installation,
you can reformat all source code with:

.. code:: bash

    black .

All new code must be formatted with the version of black indicated in
`requirements-dev.txt` in order to pass Travis CI tests.