From Release File (Windows)
---------------------------

Tested for Windows11

- Make sure to have `python <https://www.python.org/downloads/windows/>`_ (3.10 or 3.11) (Currently 3.12 is incompatible due to the version of numpy used) installed on your system and available in the PATH (There is a checkbox that you need to tick as soon as you run the installer to automatically do this).
  (If you have multiple version of python installed (including 3.12), make sure the first to appear in the PATH is a compatible version or
  set the `PYTHON` environment variable to the path of the compatible version in `run-user.bat`)

.. image:: windows_python_install.png
    :alt: Python installer
    :align: center

- From :github:`github <releases/>` download the :github:`release file <releases/latest/download/run_server.zip>`
- Unzip the release file downloaded in the previous step.
- From inside the folder, run the :code:`run-user.bat` file that will

  - Allow the user to tweak the environment variables to your liking (text editing the file), by setting/changing value to the already present ones,
    or adding new ones.
  - Create or reuse a virtual environment in the folder :code:`venv` in the same directory as the script
  - Install the required packages to run the server
  - Start the server

The server will run with sensible defaults.
Most notably the models files, plugin files (needed python packages) and database will be downloaded/created under :code:`%userprofile%/.ocr_translate`.
If not DEVICE is specified, the server will attempt to find the :code:`nvidia-smi` executable and if available, will run on GPU.

For customization, you can set the :doc:`Environment variables <../user/envs>` yourself.

Since the introduction of the :code:`run-user.bat` script, this has been made easier as you just need to edit that file
with any text editor and set the environment variables at the top of the file

.. code-block:: bat

    @echo off

    set LOAD_ON_START=

    set DEVICE=cpu
    set OCT_BASE_DIR=
    set DATABASE_NAME=

    set DJANGO_DEBUG=false
    set DJANGO_LOG_LEVEL=INFO

    call run.bat

You can see some of them already set to their default values or nothing, meaning they are left undefined.

The `call run.bat` calls the secondary script with the boilerplate code to start the server.