Required components

Python 1.5.2
The code is written for Python 1.5.2; older versions may work (and if they don't, I'll accept patches fixing the incompatibilities), but I'm only testing with 1.5.2.

Distutils
The Distutils package is used for installing Oedipus, though you could install it manually without too much trouble (simply copy the ODP/ subdirectory to some location on the Python interpreter's sys.path).

A data storage mechanism
It's possible to write ODP database classes that use different mechanisms to store data. Two modules are currently supported:

• Metakit
  If you choose MetaKit, you'll need to install it, along with the Mk4py Python module. The full database turns up a bug in MetaKit 2.0; a patch to MetaKit is included, or you can just use MetaKit 2.01 or later.

• BerkeleyDB 2.7.x and Robin Dunn's bsddb module.

Optional components

Python/XML package
This package includes a SAX implementation for Python, and the ODP code can optionally use SAX for parsing the XML data. I've tested it using version 0.5.2 and later; earlier versions may also work.