Environment Setup

If you see here then you must be a high-end player, the instructions here will be very simple.

Install Switchyard

You can find instructions here, the repository of switchyard on GitHub. A quick note here for Ubuntu.

git clone https://gitee.com/shellqiqi/switchyard.git
sudo apt-get install libffi-dev libpcap-dev python3-dev python3-pip

You can install Switchyard and the necessary related packages in an isolated Python virtual environment ("venv"), which is the recommended path, or in the system directories, which is often less desirable. The venv route is highly suggested, since it makes all installation "local" and can easily destroyed, cleaned up, and recreated.

To create a new virtual environment, you could do something like the following under your workspace folder

python3 -m venv syenv

You can change the name syenv to whatever you'd like to name your virtual environment. Next, you need to activate the environment. The instructions vary depending on the shell you're using. On bash, the command is

source ./syenv/bin/activate

You'll need to replace syenv with whatever you named the virtual environment. If you're using a different shell than bash, refer to Python documentation on the venv module.

Finally, install Switchyard. All the required additional libraries should be automatically installed, too.

python3 -m pip install switchyard

Then I suggest to exclude your virtual environment out of git tracking. Add this line in .gitignore

syenv/

Install Mininet

sudo apt-get install mininet

Or you want to build mininet yourself. The installation guide is here.

Install Wireshark

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:wireshark-dev/stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install wireshark

You need to configure wireshark during installation. For non-superusers capturing packets, choose Yes here.

Then add your user to wireshark user group to allow you capturing packets.

sudo usermod -a -G wireshark $USER

Other Softwares

You also want to install some editors like Vim, Emacs, Visual Studio Code, Sublime and so on. But we do not install any one of them to avoiding a quarrel about the best editor. Choose your favorite one and install it yourself.

Another helpful module VBoxGuestAdditions is not installed because various virtual machine hypervisors you will use.