Re: installation has NEVER worked on the first try in two years of using Pylons
Ok, so I took the time to completely walk through the steps I had trouble with last night, and I was able to reproduce the installation problem. Notice that, yes, indeed, the wrong paster was in my path, but I stepped around it by calling the full path to paster inside of my virtualenv. http://pylonshq.com/pasties/4e2608ece2c92fcc84b69784d75b754a Because I am working on bootstrapping issues anyway in my day job, I am keen to work with a couple guys on making an extremely reliable bootstrap environment for Python, perhaps Phil and Mike? I agree that there should be zero assumptions other than your on OS X, Linux, or Windows, and you have python2.4 or greater. All the necessary materials will be in a single file like the go-pylons. I can start this weekend if anyone wants to sprint on it. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups pylons-discuss group. To post to this group, send email to pylons-discuss@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to pylons-discuss+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/pylons-discuss?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: installation has NEVER worked on the first try in two years of using Pylons
On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 1:22 PM, Noah Gift noah.g...@gmail.com wrote: Because I am working on bootstrapping issues anyway in my day job, I am keen to work with a couple guys on making an extremely reliable bootstrap environment for Python, perhaps Phil and Mike? I agree that there should be zero assumptions other than your on OS X, Linux, or Windows, and you have python2.4 or greater. All the necessary materials will be in a single file like the go-pylons. I can start this weekend if anyone wants to sprint on it. Noah, I have worked on a packaging solution for creating portable executables for windows out of python programs. My focus was TurboGears2, Pylons and, on another level Twisted + pyGTK apps. I use this tool in production to deploy application on Citrix farm for hundred of users across the world (the pyGTK guis, not the tg2 apps...) and it just works for our needs: http://bitbucket.org/faide/pylunch/ This is windows centric in many (hard coded) ways but it could be interesting to work together and extend the concept or reuse some parts to support other plateforms. If you want to take a look, begin by reading the sphinx generated docs from here: http://code.google.com/p/pylunch/downloads/list Pylunch is more geared toward packaging and providing ready to use finished apps, but I would be interested to work on a more reliable install the framework for dev purposes way also. Florent. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups pylons-discuss group. To post to this group, send email to pylons-discuss@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to pylons-discuss+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/pylons-discuss?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: installation has NEVER worked on the first try in two years of using Pylons
On Apr 9, 2009, at 4:22 AM, Noah Gift wrote: Ok, so I took the time to completely walk through the steps I had trouble with last night, and I was able to reproduce the installation problem. Notice that, yes, indeed, the wrong paster was in my path, but I stepped around it by calling the full path to paster inside of my virtualenv. http://pylonshq.com/pasties/4e2608ece2c92fcc84b69784d75b754a Thanks Noah, The problem must be an old version of virtualenv (or setuptools). I see setuptools-0.6c7 in the traceback -- the latest version is 0.6c9. That means your virtualenv must be ancient. I don't recall any weird issues like this with setuptools-0.6c7, but maybe this is an old virtualenv issue, maybe even particular to OSX. -- Philip Jenvey --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups pylons-discuss group. To post to this group, send email to pylons-discuss@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to pylons-discuss+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/pylons-discuss?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: installation has NEVER worked on the first try in two years of using Pylons
On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 4:22 AM, Noah Gift noah.g...@gmail.com wrote: anyway in my day job, I am keen to work with a couple guys on making an extremely reliable bootstrap environment for Python, perhaps Phil and Mike? I agree that there should be zero assumptions other than your on OS X, Linux, or Windows, and you have python2.4 or greater. All the necessary materials will be in a single file like the go-pylons. I can start this weekend if anyone wants to sprint on it. I can work on it Friday evening (Saturday afternoon to you). Send me a spec of what you want to do. If we can make some Pylons tarballs while we're at it, so much the better. I only have Linux now; I sold my MacBook. Regarding Ben's comment, is it possible that Nose and Tempita were in the global site-packages? Maybe easy_install thought they were installed already, although you'd think it would say something about that. It seems that Tempita is a direct dependency of only Pylons and WebError. What happens if you create a new virtualenv and install only WebError? -- Mike Orr sluggos...@gmail.com --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups pylons-discuss group. To post to this group, send email to pylons-discuss@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to pylons-discuss+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/pylons-discuss?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: installation has NEVER worked on the first try in two years of using Pylons
On Wed, 2009-04-08 at 12:14 -0700, Philip Jenvey wrote: On Apr 8, 2009, at 4:50 AM, Noah Gift wrote: I get frustrated every time I setup a new virtualENV as I forgot that something always breaks. I just got this today: http://pylonshq.com/pasties/d8768f105749c5c169094812c4e0f01a I suspect you might have actually forgotten --no-site-packages. If you did indeed set it there would be a /Users/ngift/src/pylonsENV/lib/ python2.5/no-global-site-packages.txt Otherwise I don't know why Tempita wouldn't have been installed. Is it reproducible? Regardless of what the problem is, in the future it would be nice if we provided an 'all in one' install archive. Like a pip bundle (but then we have to require pip), or I think zc.sourcerelease can produce something similar. EggFreezer also does something along these lines but was more of a binary distribution installer. Something that bootstraps itself and installs everything without having to go through pypi, like a fully self contained go-pylons.py +1 on that! Iain --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups pylons-discuss group. To post to this group, send email to pylons-discuss@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to pylons-discuss+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/pylons-discuss?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: installation has NEVER worked on the first try in two years of using Pylons
On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 11:37 AM, Iain Duncan iaindun...@telus.net wrote: Regardless of what the problem is, in the future it would be nice if we provided an 'all in one' install archive. Like a pip bundle (but then we have to require pip), or I think zc.sourcerelease can produce something similar. EggFreezer also does something along these lines but was more of a binary distribution installer. Something that bootstraps itself and installs everything without having to go through pypi, like a fully self contained go-pylons.py +1 on that! There are a few ways to go with this. - A tarball containing all the source packages and an installation script. - Include everything in the script. appengine-homedir does this; e.g., base64-encoding site.py and putting it in a string. But that would not be feasable for entire packages or large files; the file would be impossible to edit if you have to go through pagefuls of base64-encoded text. - A tarball containing preinstalled site-packages files. These may need to be different per platform or Python version. - Can all of Pylons and its dependencies be zipped now? If not, which ones can be? Our goal should be a zip of everything except the simplejson speedups, even if we don't install it zipped by default. - App Engine needs some alternative versions. * Full Pylons without .pyc or simplejson speedups. * Same but zipped, or zipped per package. * Exclude obsolete webhelpers etc. * Exclude nose, tests, pip, admin utilities, the non-pkg_resources part of Setuptools, and other things not used on the server. * Other variations to limit the number of files and size. App Engine is easier because there's only one Python version (2.5.2) and no platform-specific code (since C modules can't run on the server). Regular webservers may need more variations due to the different Python versions, platforms, and people's notions of what they need. On the other hand, regular webservers not have the severe restriction on number of files, so people are less concerned about installing unused packages. appengine-homedir provides a nice directory structure for organizing a Pylons application inside a virtualenv. Maybe we should support that in other environments? On the other hand, I like keeping my virtualenvs separate from my applications, so I can run the same application under different virtualenvs. So to reiterate, the main goals seem to be: - An installation archive that does not require PyPI or network access. - A script like go-pylons.py for use therewith. - Enough flexibility so that we can build upgrades and alternative versions without a lot of time and effort. - An archive containing either source packages or installed packages, whichever seems most feasable. - Various pip features like requirements, bundle, egg cache may help. Also, all Pylons dependencies are maintained at http://pylonshq.com/download . (However, that page includes more than we need, specifically old versions.) - Integration with Virtualenv. -- Mike Orr sluggos...@gmail.com --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups pylons-discuss group. To post to this group, send email to pylons-discuss@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to pylons-discuss+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/pylons-discuss?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: installation has NEVER worked on the first try in two years of using Pylons
I get frustrated every time I setup a new virtualENV as I forgot that something always breaks. For those using Python 2.6*, I'd like to see how much better/worse this sollution is: # starting from scratch, a clean slate: wget https://svn.openplans.org/svn/pip/trunk/pip.py chmod +x pip.py export PYTHONUSERBASE=$HOME/myenv export PATH=$HOME/myenv/bin:$PATH ./pip.py install --install-option=--user Pylons You should get everything installed in $HOME/myenv/lib/python2.6/site- packages and $HOME/myenv/bin I've used it on linux and it never failed me. I wonder how it works on Mac OS X and Windows (since I don't have access to those). I do notice, that I don't get setuptools installed in the USER-BASE, since nothing in Pylons seems to require it, but I do have a recent version (0.6c9) installed system-wide from a distro package. Does Pylons use it on it's own? * This relies on the Python 2.6 feature aka pep-370: http://docs.python.org/whatsnew/2.6.html#pep-370-per-user-site-packages-directory --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups pylons-discuss group. To post to this group, send email to pylons-discuss@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to pylons-discuss+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/pylons-discuss?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
installation has NEVER worked on the first try in two years of using Pylons
I get frustrated every time I setup a new virtualENV as I forgot that something always breaks. I just got this today: http://pylonshq.com/pasties/d8768f105749c5c169094812c4e0f01a Sigh... This is a tad frustrating because everytime I tell someone to use Pylons, them tell me installation breaks, then I say, thanks can't be..., and it always turns out to be true. Of course I can fix this myself by installing tempita and nose, but it can really burn a newbie forever from using Pylons. Anyone as motivated as me to permanently fix this so an install NEVER breaks. I think this is possible. -- Cheers, Noah --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups pylons-discuss group. To post to this group, send email to pylons-discuss@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to pylons-discuss+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/pylons-discuss?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: installation has NEVER worked on the first try in two years of using Pylons
On Apr 8, 4:50 am, Noah Gift noah.g...@gmail.com wrote: I get frustrated every time I setup a new virtualENV as I forgot that something always breaks. I just got this today: http://pylonshq.com/pasties/d8768f105749c5c169094812c4e0f01a Sigh... This is a tad frustrating because everytime I tell someone to use Pylons, them tell me installation breaks, then I say, thanks can't be..., and it always turns out to be true. Of course I can fix this myself by installing tempita and nose, but it can really burn a newbie forever from using Pylons. Anyone as motivated as me to permanently fix this so an install NEVER breaks. I think this is possible. For me, installation has never NOT worked in 2+ years. I'm not on OS X, but I'm attempting to reproduce the error you linked to: cd /tmp virtualenv --no-site-packages pylonsENV cd pylonsENV source bin/activate easy_install Pylons paster create --template=pylons wpug No errors. Python 2.5. virtualenv 1.3.3. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups pylons-discuss group. To post to this group, send email to pylons-discuss@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to pylons-discuss+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/pylons-discuss?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: installation has NEVER worked on the first try in two years of using Pylons
On Apr 8, 2009, at 4:50 AM, Noah Gift wrote: I get frustrated every time I setup a new virtualENV as I forgot that something always breaks. I just got this today: http://pylonshq.com/pasties/d8768f105749c5c169094812c4e0f01a Sigh... This is a tad frustrating because everytime I tell someone to use Pylons, them tell me installation breaks, then I say, thanks can't be..., and it always turns out to be true. Of course I can fix this myself by installing tempita and nose, but it can really burn a newbie forever from using Pylons. Anyone as motivated as me to permanently fix this so an install NEVER breaks. I think this is possible. On OSX, it's always installed just fine. Over a half dozen people on OSX that I've sent to the Pylons Getting Started page have installed and run the helloworld Pylons app just fine as well. - Ben smime.p7s Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature
Re: installation has NEVER worked on the first try in two years of using Pylons
On Apr 8, 2009, at 4:50 AM, Noah Gift wrote: I get frustrated every time I setup a new virtualENV as I forgot that something always breaks. I just got this today: http://pylonshq.com/pasties/d8768f105749c5c169094812c4e0f01a I suspect you might have actually forgotten --no-site-packages. If you did indeed set it there would be a /Users/ngift/src/pylonsENV/lib/ python2.5/no-global-site-packages.txt Otherwise I don't know why Tempita wouldn't have been installed. Is it reproducible? Regardless of what the problem is, in the future it would be nice if we provided an 'all in one' install archive. Like a pip bundle (but then we have to require pip), or I think zc.sourcerelease can produce something similar. EggFreezer also does something along these lines but was more of a binary distribution installer. Something that bootstraps itself and installs everything without having to go through pypi, like a fully self contained go-pylons.py -- Philip Jenvey --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups pylons-discuss group. To post to this group, send email to pylons-discuss@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to pylons-discuss+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/pylons-discuss?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: installation has NEVER worked on the first try in two years of using Pylons
On Wed, Apr 8, 2009 at 11:41 AM, Ben Bangert b...@groovie.org wrote: On Apr 8, 2009, at 4:50 AM, Noah Gift wrote: I get frustrated every time I setup a new virtualENV as I forgot that something always breaks. I just got this today: http://pylonshq.com/pasties/d8768f105749c5c169094812c4e0f01a Sigh... This is a tad frustrating because everytime I tell someone to use Pylons, them tell me installation breaks, then I say, thanks can't be..., and it always turns out to be true. Of course I can fix this myself by installing tempita and nose, but it can really burn a newbie forever from using Pylons. Anyone as motivated as me to permanently fix this so an install NEVER breaks. I think this is possible. On OSX, it's always installed just fine. Over a half dozen people on OSX that I've sent to the Pylons Getting Started page have installed and run the helloworld Pylons app just fine as well. It sounds like Noah's problem may that he is forgetting to easy_install Pylons, so he's trying to use the paster that was installed outside of the virtualenv. What does which paster say? -bob --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups pylons-discuss group. To post to this group, send email to pylons-discuss@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to pylons-discuss+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/pylons-discuss?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: installation has NEVER worked on the first try in two years of using Pylons
On Wed, Apr 8, 2009 at 12:14 PM, Philip Jenvey pjen...@underboss.org wrote: On Apr 8, 2009, at 4:50 AM, Noah Gift wrote: I get frustrated every time I setup a new virtualENV as I forgot that something always breaks. I just got this today: http://pylonshq.com/pasties/d8768f105749c5c169094812c4e0f01a I suspect you might have actually forgotten --no-site-packages. If you did indeed set it there would be a /Users/ngift/src/pylonsENV/lib/ python2.5/no-global-site-packages.txt Otherwise I don't know why Tempita wouldn't have been installed. Is it reproducible? Regardless of what the problem is, in the future it would be nice if we provided an 'all in one' install archive. Like a pip bundle (but then we have to require pip), or I think zc.sourcerelease can produce something similar. EggFreezer also does something along these lines but was more of a binary distribution installer. Something that bootstraps itself and installs everything without having to go through pypi, like a fully self contained go-pylons.py This is going to be a necessity over the long term. The installation system has several points of failure, and different users get trapped by different ones. On some Windows machines virtualenv won't install. On others simplejson won't compile. On other machines (all platforms) people get ImportError because the path wasn't set for Pylons or for the application. Sometimes the user just forgot to install the application; other times it's something else. People run go-pylons.py and it fails for any number of reasons. I set up several coworkers with Pylons, and all of them got different errors initially. Sometimes it's a FAQ error I recognize, sometimes it's a unique situation that takes some troubleshooting, but in all cases it's enough to stop newbies cold because they have no idea what's happening or how to fix it. The answer is not to blame users for being stupid. It's to make the procedure as simple and foolproof as possible. So 20 users surveyed didn't have any problems. They don't have the same computers as the ones who did have problems. That's why Pylons minimizes C dependencies. But many of the problems are not directly Pylons' fault. The core problem is that Python does not have a built-in system for downloading and installing packages. So: (1) you have to bootstrap virtualenv/setuptools, (2) some package may require a newer version of setuptools than the one installed, (3) the path can be set wrong for any number of reasons, (4) PyPI may be down, (5) simplejson installation may abort, (6) Tempita or some package may not automatically install for some reason, etc. Those are just the things I've personally observed over the past year. What makes Pylons more complex and fragile is its dependency on third-party packages, which may upgrade or change their dependencies at any time. Plone and Django work around this problem by distributing a preconfigured tarball. This needs to be explored for Pylons. One problem is that people use virtualenvs, and those are tied to specific computers. So the tarball would have to be installed inside the virtualenv, unless somebody figures out how to make a generic virtualenv. Currently I'm extracting appengine-homedir out of appengine-monkey, and this environment would also benefit from a portable Pylons tarball. So I may have one in a couple of weeks if I have time to put it together. -- Mike Orr sluggos...@gmail.com --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups pylons-discuss group. To post to this group, send email to pylons-discuss@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to pylons-discuss+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/pylons-discuss?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: installation has NEVER worked on the first try in two years of using Pylons
On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 6:28 AM, Wyatt Baldwin wyatt.lee.bald...@gmail.com wrote: On Apr 8, 4:50 am, Noah Gift noah.g...@gmail.com wrote: I get frustrated every time I setup a new virtualENV as I forgot that something always breaks. I just got this today: http://pylonshq.com/pasties/d8768f105749c5c169094812c4e0f01a Sigh... This is a tad frustrating because everytime I tell someone to use Pylons, them tell me installation breaks, then I say, thanks can't be..., and it always turns out to be true. Of course I can fix this myself by installing tempita and nose, but it can really burn a newbie forever from using Pylons. Anyone as motivated as me to permanently fix this so an install NEVER breaks. I think this is possible. For me, installation has never NOT worked in 2+ years. I'm not on OS X, but I'm attempting to reproduce the error you linked to: cd /tmp virtualenv --no-site-packages pylonsENV cd pylonsENV source bin/activate easy_install Pylons paster create --template=pylons wpug No errors. Python 2.5. virtualenv 1.3.3. I have the buffer up on my system at home. Let me trace the whole set of events into a more formal bug report. -- Cheers, Noah --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups pylons-discuss group. To post to this group, send email to pylons-discuss@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to pylons-discuss+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/pylons-discuss?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: installation has NEVER worked on the first try in two years of using Pylons
On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 6:41 AM, Ben Bangert b...@groovie.org wrote: On Apr 8, 2009, at 4:50 AM, Noah Gift wrote: I get frustrated every time I setup a new virtualENV as I forgot that something always breaks. I just got this today: http://pylonshq.com/pasties/d8768f105749c5c169094812c4e0f01a Sigh... This is a tad frustrating because everytime I tell someone to use Pylons, them tell me installation breaks, then I say, thanks can't be..., and it always turns out to be true. Of course I can fix this myself by installing tempita and nose, but it can really burn a newbie forever from using Pylons. Anyone as motivated as me to permanently fix this so an install NEVER breaks. I think this is possible. On OSX, it's always installed just fine. Over a half dozen people on OSX that I've sent to the Pylons Getting Started page have installed and run the helloworld Pylons app just fine as well. Hmm, I wonder if something is going on with my ecosystem possibly then. About 24 hours ago, I was doing some research on why it took 26 seconds to run nose, and I discovered this information: http://artificialcode.blogspot.com/2009/04/short-circuiting-python-module-lookup.html If you use eggs, then setuptools always looks at all of them, no matter what module you install. I have also had problems with bfg and turbogears blowing up too. I do like my analogy on Python packaging though, not sure if I have shared it here or not. What would you do if, in a fictional scenario, someone kidnapped your family, and said, In 24 hours, we are going to install your software, either on Mac, Linux, or Windows. If it works, will release your family. Would you do anything different then what you are doing now. Or are you confident that it is as reliable as possible and that it will install 99.% of the time on any system? - Ben -- Cheers, Noah --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups pylons-discuss group. To post to this group, send email to pylons-discuss@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to pylons-discuss+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/pylons-discuss?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: installation has NEVER worked on the first try in two years of using Pylons
On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 7:14 AM, Philip Jenvey pjen...@underboss.org wrote: On Apr 8, 2009, at 4:50 AM, Noah Gift wrote: I get frustrated every time I setup a new virtualENV as I forgot that something always breaks. I just got this today: http://pylonshq.com/pasties/d8768f105749c5c169094812c4e0f01a I suspect you might have actually forgotten --no-site-packages. If you did indeed set it there would be a /Users/ngift/src/pylonsENV/lib/ python2.5/no-global-site-packages.txt Ok, i will check this out too. It might be another 24 hours before I get back on this, as I am doing a talk on Pylons tonight :) Otherwise I don't know why Tempita wouldn't have been installed. Is it reproducible? Regardless of what the problem is, in the future it would be nice if we provided an 'all in one' install archive. Like a pip bundle (but then we have to require pip), or I think zc.sourcerelease can produce something similar. EggFreezer also does something along these lines but was more of a binary distribution installer. +1 Something that bootstraps itself and installs everything without having to go through pypi, like a fully self contained go-pylons.py +1 -- Philip Jenvey -- Cheers, Noah --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups pylons-discuss group. To post to this group, send email to pylons-discuss@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to pylons-discuss+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/pylons-discuss?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: installation has NEVER worked on the first try in two years of using Pylons
On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 7:16 AM, Bob Ippolito b...@redivi.com wrote: On Wed, Apr 8, 2009 at 11:41 AM, Ben Bangert b...@groovie.org wrote: On Apr 8, 2009, at 4:50 AM, Noah Gift wrote: I get frustrated every time I setup a new virtualENV as I forgot that something always breaks. I just got this today: http://pylonshq.com/pasties/d8768f105749c5c169094812c4e0f01a Sigh... This is a tad frustrating because everytime I tell someone to use Pylons, them tell me installation breaks, then I say, thanks can't be..., and it always turns out to be true. Of course I can fix this myself by installing tempita and nose, but it can really burn a newbie forever from using Pylons. Anyone as motivated as me to permanently fix this so an install NEVER breaks. I think this is possible. On OSX, it's always installed just fine. Over a half dozen people on OSX that I've sent to the Pylons Getting Started page have installed and run the helloworld Pylons app just fine as well. It sounds like Noah's problem may that he is forgetting to easy_install Pylons, so he's trying to use the paster that was installed outside of the virtualenv. What does which paster say? I am pretty sure I did, but I need to double check. Thanks for bringing up the paster issue, I had the exact issue about three months ago :) I used go-pylons, and then tried to create a Pylons template and paster blew up. It took me a few minutes to figure out there where two pasters, and the first paster was in my path first, even though I sourced virtualenv. That is another gotcha. -bob -- Cheers, Noah --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups pylons-discuss group. To post to this group, send email to pylons-discuss@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to pylons-discuss+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/pylons-discuss?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: installation has NEVER worked on the first try in two years of using Pylons
On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 7:41 AM, Mike Orr sluggos...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Apr 8, 2009 at 12:14 PM, Philip Jenvey pjen...@underboss.org wrote: On Apr 8, 2009, at 4:50 AM, Noah Gift wrote: I get frustrated every time I setup a new virtualENV as I forgot that something always breaks. I just got this today: http://pylonshq.com/pasties/d8768f105749c5c169094812c4e0f01a I suspect you might have actually forgotten --no-site-packages. If you did indeed set it there would be a /Users/ngift/src/pylonsENV/lib/ python2.5/no-global-site-packages.txt Otherwise I don't know why Tempita wouldn't have been installed. Is it reproducible? Regardless of what the problem is, in the future it would be nice if we provided an 'all in one' install archive. Like a pip bundle (but then we have to require pip), or I think zc.sourcerelease can produce something similar. EggFreezer also does something along these lines but was more of a binary distribution installer. Something that bootstraps itself and installs everything without having to go through pypi, like a fully self contained go-pylons.py This is going to be a necessity over the long term. The installation system has several points of failure, and different users get trapped by different ones. On some Windows machines virtualenv won't install. On others simplejson won't compile. On other machines (all platforms) people get ImportError because the path wasn't set for Pylons or for the application. Sometimes the user just forgot to install the application; other times it's something else. People run go-pylons.py and it fails for any number of reasons. I set up several coworkers with Pylons, and all of them got different errors initially. Sometimes it's a FAQ error I recognize, sometimes it's a unique situation that takes some troubleshooting, but in all cases it's enough to stop newbies cold because they have no idea what's happening or how to fix it. The answer is not to blame users for being stupid. It's to make the procedure as simple and foolproof as possible. So 20 users surveyed didn't have any problems. They don't have the same computers as the ones who did have problems. That's why Pylons minimizes C dependencies. But many of the problems are not directly Pylons' fault. The core problem is that Python does not have a built-in system for downloading and installing packages. So: (1) you have to bootstrap virtualenv/setuptools, (2) some package may require a newer version of setuptools than the one installed, (3) the path can be set wrong for any number of reasons, (4) PyPI may be down, (5) simplejson installation may abort, (6) Tempita or some package may not automatically install for some reason, etc. Those are just the things I've personally observed over the past year. What makes Pylons more complex and fragile is its dependency on third-party packages, which may upgrade or change their dependencies at any time. I agree, this isn't Pylons fault really, but the ecoystem for Python packaging. Plone and Django work around this problem by distributing a preconfigured tarball. This needs to be explored for Pylons. One problem is that people use virtualenvs, and those are tied to specific computers. So the tarball would have to be installed inside the virtualenv, unless somebody figures out how to make a generic virtualenv. Currently I'm extracting appengine-homedir out of appengine-monkey, and this environment would also benefit from a portable Pylons tarball. So I may have one in a couple of weeks if I have time to put it together. -- Mike Orr sluggos...@gmail.com -- Cheers, Noah --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups pylons-discuss group. To post to this group, send email to pylons-discuss@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to pylons-discuss+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/pylons-discuss?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: installation has NEVER worked on the first try in two years of using Pylons
On Apr 8, 2009, at 2:44 PM, Noah Gift wrote: I do like my analogy on Python packaging though, not sure if I have shared it here or not. What would you do if, in a fictional scenario, someone kidnapped your family, and said, In 24 hours, we are going to install your software, either on Mac, Linux, or Windows. If it works, will release your family. Would you do anything different then what you are doing now. Or are you confident that it is as reliable as possible and that it will install 99.% of the time on any system? Wow, I think you're getting a little too worked up over this. Does it suck when an install fails? You betcha. Is any installer system flawless? Nope. Of these installers: - Ruby gems - Python egg's - RPM's - Debian packages - FreeBSD Ports/packages Every single one of them has failed me in the past when installing at some point. Not a single one has touched the 99% figure you speak of, even though some of the ones in that list have had *many* full-time software developers spend considerably more effort on them than the Python egg installing stuff has had. Now, I think installing has gotten significantly better for Pylons. If you look back to after the 0.9.6 release, there was a decent amount of people reporting install issues. When 0.9.7 was released, there was a tiny fraction of the install breakage from the past. We've made a hell of a lot of progress, and none of us have full-time jobs to working on this software (unlike some of the people working on the debian/RPM installers). Noah, you work at Weta, thats a big (and rather profitable) company that uses Python. Maybe you could get some of them to sic some full- time programmers on making the system as flawless as you speak of for the good of all python packages? :) Cheers, Ben smime.p7s Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature
Re: installation has NEVER worked on the first try in two years of using Pylons
On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 10:04 AM, Ben Bangert b...@groovie.org wrote: On Apr 8, 2009, at 2:44 PM, Noah Gift wrote: I do like my analogy on Python packaging though, not sure if I have shared it here or not. What would you do if, in a fictional scenario, someone kidnapped your family, and said, In 24 hours, we are going to install your software, either on Mac, Linux, or Windows. If it works, will release your family. Would you do anything different then what you are doing now. Or are you confident that it is as reliable as possible and that it will install 99.% of the time on any system? Wow, I think you're getting a little too worked up over this. I hope it doesn't come across that way :) I am on your side. I do want this to work though :) Does it suck when an install fails? You betcha. Is any installer system flawless? Nope. Of these installers: - Ruby gems - Python egg's - RPM's - Debian packages - FreeBSD Ports/packages Every single one of them has failed me in the past when installing at some point. Not a single one has touched the 99% figure you speak of, even though some of the ones in that list have had *many* full-time software developers spend considerably more effort on them than the Python egg installing stuff has had. Now, I think installing has gotten significantly better for Pylons. If you look back to after the 0.9.6 release, there was a decent amount of people reporting install issues. When 0.9.7 was released, there was a tiny fraction of the install breakage from the past. We've made a hell of a lot of progress, and none of us have full-time jobs to working on this software (unlike some of the people working on the debian/RPM installers). Noah, you work at Weta, thats a big (and rather profitable) company that uses Python. Maybe you could get some of them to sic some full-time programmers on making the system as flawless as you speak of for the good of all python packages? :) I do agree, this is something that companies that use open source software should do. I am also willing to help present it to management. Cheers, Ben -- Cheers, Noah --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups pylons-discuss group. To post to this group, send email to pylons-discuss@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to pylons-discuss+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/pylons-discuss?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: installation has NEVER worked on the first try in two years of using Pylons
On Wed, Apr 8, 2009 at 3:12 PM, Noah Gift noah.g...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 10:04 AM, Ben Bangert b...@groovie.org wrote: Noah, you work at Weta, thats a big (and rather profitable) company that uses Python. Maybe you could get some of them to sic some full-time programmers on making the system as flawless as you speak of for the good of all python packages? :) I do agree, this is something that companies that use open source software should do. I am also willing to help present it to management. You did mention a while ago that the company may be willing to contribute financially to Python projects, if a suitable nonprofit structure were in place to receive the funds. Given that such a structure does not exist at this point, it would be worth asking them to contribute some developer time instead, either yours or hiring somebody. That way it's merely a code contribution which is tax-neutral, and something that the company can do unilaterally. You can point out that by contributing, they're encouraging others likewise to contribute, which will benefit the company. (And has already benefited the company since they're using the software.) At PyCon I happened to sit next to the PSF treasurer during lunch, so I mentioned to him that some Python projects have been looking for help to set up a nonprofit structure to receive donations. He said he would look into it, but that all the scenarios he can think of require a lot of paperwork and accounting and legal liability on the PSF's part, and may be both peripheral to the PSF's mission and overkill for the small amount of money that each project is likely to attract. I gave him the address of a Seattle sports group that has a similar structure, where each team is a member and can receive pass-through donations and keep their own accounting. He said he'd look into how they do it and whether it would be feasable for the PSF. But in the meantime, it may be that in-kind donations are just easier overall. -- Mike Orr sluggos...@gmail.com --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups pylons-discuss group. To post to this group, send email to pylons-discuss@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to pylons-discuss+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/pylons-discuss?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: installation has NEVER worked on the first try in two years of using Pylons
On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 10:42 AM, Mike Orr sluggos...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Apr 8, 2009 at 3:12 PM, Noah Gift noah.g...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 10:04 AM, Ben Bangert b...@groovie.org wrote: Noah, you work at Weta, thats a big (and rather profitable) company that uses Python. Maybe you could get some of them to sic some full-time programmers on making the system as flawless as you speak of for the good of all python packages? :) I do agree, this is something that companies that use open source software should do. I am also willing to help present it to management. You did mention a while ago that the company may be willing to contribute financially to Python projects, if a suitable nonprofit structure were in place to receive the funds. Given that such a structure does not exist at this point, it would be worth asking them to contribute some developer time instead, either yours or hiring somebody. That way it's merely a code contribution which is tax-neutral, and something that the company can do unilaterally. You can point out that by contributing, they're encouraging others likewise to contribute, which will benefit the company. (And has already benefited the company since they're using the software.) At PyCon I happened to sit next to the PSF treasurer during lunch, so I mentioned to him that some Python projects have been looking for help to set up a nonprofit structure to receive donations. He said he would look into it, but that all the scenarios he can think of require a lot of paperwork and accounting and legal liability on the PSF's part, and may be both peripheral to the PSF's mission and overkill for the small amount of money that each project is likely to attract. I gave him the address of a Seattle sports group that has a similar structure, where each team is a member and can receive pass-through donations and keep their own accounting. He said he'd look into how they do it and whether it would be feasable for the PSF. But in the meantime, it may be that in-kind donations are just easier overall. Fortunately or unfortunately, I don't make financial decisions at my current company, although I think a case could be made at many companies :) I do agree though, that giving money to Pylons is a good thing. In fact, I have already mentioned privately, that I have no problem donating my own money, because I do a fair amount of consulting. If there was a mechanism in place for people to make micropayments to have certain features or problems solved, I think you would be quite surprised at the amount of people who give developers money. In addition, if some tasks are seperated into jobs, then possibly outside contributors who don't really know everything about Pylons, could help just do those specific taskslike getting packaging 99% effective,etc. In case it wasn't clear, I think the Pylons is doing an expectionally good job, and the core developers need more recognition, help, and money. Getting a more formal way to provide recognition, money, and help would be a good thing. -- Mike Orr sluggos...@gmail.com -- Cheers, Noah --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups pylons-discuss group. To post to this group, send email to pylons-discuss@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to pylons-discuss+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/pylons-discuss?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
