Assuming a virgin installation of Ubuntu 14.04, the SecureDrop repository and its dependencies can be installed with the following:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y python-virtualenv git
sudo apt-get install -y build-essential libssl-dev libffi-dev python-dev
virtualenv /tmp/v
source /tmp/v/bin/activate
pip install --upgrade pip # so it is able to get binary wheels
pip install ansible # so we have version 2+
git clone http://github.com/freedomofpress/securedrop
cd securedrop
cat > /tmp/inventory <<EOF
[development]
localhost
[securedrop_application_server]
localhost
[securedrop:children]
securedrop_application_server
EOF
ansible-playbook -vvvv \
-e securedrop_repo=$(pwd) \
-e non_default_securedrop_user=ubuntu \
-e non_default_securedrop_code=$(pwd)/securedrop \
-i /tmp/inventory -c local \
install_files/ansible-base/securedrop-development.yml
And the tests can then be run with
$ cd securedrop $ DISPLAY=:1 pytest -v tests