1 files changed, 88 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..eee19f7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,88 @@
+
+# Black Star Information Extraction
+
+The Black Star Information Extraction (BSIE) package provides a pipeline
+to extract metadata and content-derived features from files and stores
+that information in a BSFS storage.
+
+## Installation
+
+You can install BSIE via pip. BSIE comes with support for various file formats.
+For this, it needs to install many external packages. BSIE lets you control
+which of these you want to install. Note that if you choose to not install
+support for some file types, BSIE will show a warning and skip them.
+All other formats will be processed normally.
+
+To install only the minimally required software, use:
+
+    $ pip install --extra-index-url https://pip.bsfs.io bsie
+
+To install all dependencies, use the following shortcut:
+
+    $ pip install --extra-index-url https://pip.bsfs.io bsie[all]
+
+To install a subset of all dependencies, modify the extras part (``[image, preview]``)
+of the follwing command to your liking:
+
+    $ pip install --extra-index-url https://pip.bsfs.io bsie[image,preview]
+
+Currently, BSIE providesthe following extra flags:
+
+* image: Read data from image files.
+  Note that you may also have to install ``exiftool`` through your system's
+  package manager (e.g. ``sudo apt install exiftool``).
+* preview: Create previews from a variety of files.
+  Note that support for various file formats also depends on what
+  system packages you've installed. You should at least install ``imagemagick``
+  through your system's package manager (e.g. ``sudo apt install imagemagick``).
+  See [Preview Generator](https://github.com/algoo/preview-generator) for
+  more detailed instructions.
+* features: Extract feature vectors from images.
+
+
+## Development
+
+Set up a virtual environment:
+
+    $ virtualenv env
+    $ source env/bin/activate
+
+Install bsie as editable from the git repository:
+
+    $ git clone https://git.bsfs.io/bsie.git
+    $ cd bsie
+    $ pip install -e .[all]
+
+If you want to develop (*dev*), run the tests (*test*), edit the
+documentation (*doc*), or build a distributable (*build*),
+install bsfs with the respective extras (in addition to file format extras):
+
+    $ pip install -e .[dev,doc,build,test]
+
+Or, you can manually install the following packages besides BSIE:
+
+    $ pip install coverage mypy pylint
+    $ pip install rdflib requests types-PyYAML
+    $ pip install sphinx sphinx-copybutton furo
+    $ pip install build
+
+To ensure code style discipline, run the following commands:
+
+    $ coverage run ; coverage html ; xdg-open .htmlcov/index.html
+    $ pylint bsie
+    $ mypy
+
+To build the package, do:
+
+    $ python -m build
+
+To run only the tests (without coverage), run the following command from the **test folder**:
+
+    $ python -m unittest
+
+To build the documentation, run the following commands from the **doc folder**:
+
+    $ sphinx-apidoc -f -o source/api ../bsie/ --module-first -d 1 --separate
+    $ make html
+    $ xdg-open build/html/index.html
+