Installation

This project is tested with Python 3.6 and newer. It is recommended to install the project and its dependencies inside a Python virtual environment to avoid conflicts with system-wide packages.

System Dependencies

Before installing the Python package, you need to install a few system-level dependencies. These include git, wget, and libraries required to build the lxml package.

On Ubuntu/Debian:

sudo apt-get install git python3-dev libxml2-dev libxslt1-dev libz-dev python3-pip python3-venv

On macOS (using Homebrew):

First, ensure you have the XCode Command Line Tools installed.

brew install wget

Python Environment Setup

Create a Virtual Environment:

It is highly recommended to use a virtual environment. Create one for this project:
```
python3 -m venv env
```
Activate the Virtual Environment:

You must activate the environment before installing dependencies.
```
source env/bin/activate
```
Install the Project:

With your virtual environment activated, install the unitedstates/congress package. This command reads the setup.py file and automatically installs all required Python dependencies.
```
pip install .
```

Core Python Dependencies

The following Python libraries will be installed automatically:

beautifulsoup4
cssselect
iso8601
lxml
mechanize
mock
rtyaml
python-dateutil
pytz
pyyaml
scrapelib
xmltodict
packaging