Installing CKAN

Before you can use CKAN on your own computer, you need to install it. There are three ways to install CKAN:

  1. Install from an operating system package
  2. Install from source
  3. Install from Docker Compose

CKAN 2.9 supports Python 3.6 or higher and Python 2.7. The next version of CKAN will support Python 3 only.

Installing from package is the quickest and easiest way to install CKAN, but it requires Ubuntu 18.04 64-bit or Ubuntu 20.04 64-bit.

You should install CKAN from package if:

  • You want to install CKAN on an Ubuntu 18.04 or 20.04, 64-bit server, and
  • You only want to run one CKAN website per server

See Installing CKAN from package.

You should install CKAN from source if:

  • You want to install CKAN on a 32-bit computer, or
  • You want to install CKAN on a different version of Ubuntu, not 18.04 or 20.04, or
  • You want to install CKAN on another operating system (eg. RHEL, CentOS, OS X), or
  • You want to run multiple CKAN websites on the same server, or
  • You want to install CKAN for development

See Installing CKAN from source.

The provided Docker Compose configuration provides a clean and quick way to deploy a vanilla CKAN without extensions, while still allowing the addition (and customization) of extensions. This option comes with the caveat that some further steps need to be taken to deploy a production-ready CKAN. You should install CKAN from Docker Compose if:

  • You want to install CKAN with less effort than a source install and more flexibility than a package install, or
  • You want to run or even develop extensions with the minimum setup effort, or
  • You want to see whether and how CKAN, Docker and your respective infrastructure will fit together.

See Installing CKAN with Docker Compose.

If you’ve already setup a CKAN website and want to upgrade it to a newer version of CKAN, see Upgrading CKAN.