I am trying to run the matplotlib tests on Ubuntu 16.04 in a virtualenv. I am following the instructions on the developer's tips for testing page but am having problems getting started I will gladly submit a documentation pull request, but want to know if I am in the right direction.

It seems I need to pip install additional packages:

• numpy
• pyparsing
• backports.functools_lru_cache
• sphinx (for tests/tinypages, which does not have a skip if no sphinx)

Is pdflatex a recomendation?

There is no description of how to build matplotlib. I simply did python setup.py build_ext -i but then needed to run tests with PYTHONPATH=lib python -mpytest lib/matplotlib. IMO this should be described just after the section describing how to set setup.cfg

Once I did that, tests started running.

I have pdflatex installed, the test_backend_pgf::test_pdflatex image comparison test failed. I did verify that the build_ext command linked in the correct local libfreetype.a. Is the failure normal? If so I would also add that to the documentation, if not I would appreciate tips how to fix it. Maybe I am missing a font or two?

Matplotlib version

• Operating system: Ubuntu 16.04
• Matplotlib version: HEAD
• Matplotlib backend (print(matplotlib.get_backend())): tkagg
• Python version: 2.7.12
• Jupyter version (if applicable): NA
• Other libraries:

This is from a clean virtualenv, with only pytest, mock installed, and Ghostscript, Inkscape apt installed as per instructions.