On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 7:41 AM, Mike Orr <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Wed, Apr 8, 2009 at 12:14 PM, Philip Jenvey <[email protected]> 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 <[email protected]> > > > > -- 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 [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/pylons-discuss?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
