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emacsen / changemonger

An OpenStreetMap change analyzer
GNU Affero General Public License v3.0
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Make installation/testing easier #9

Open samatjain opened 12 years ago

samatjain commented 12 years ago

For those who don't like virtualenv (i.e. me) or don't know it well, included a Makefile users can run to setup virtualenv, download dependencies, and start dev server.

emacsen commented 12 years ago

Using pip is the standard way of installing and maintaining packages in Python. It supplants Setuptools and the old "python setup.py install" method.

virtualenv is optional; it just isolates those packages from the rest of the system. People can install the requirements without virtualenv, of course, but they'll lose the benefit of being able to isolate one program's requirements from another.

Maybe the core problem isn't make vs pip, but rather "Can this program be made easier to install?" and the answer to that is yes- I will open an issue for that and try to work on a setup.py file that can be used with pip. At that point, installation will be a one step download/get requirements/build/install.

The Makefile contains (essentially) a very very simple (incomplete) version of virtualenvwrapper, a tool written around virtualenv. I don't use it, but you may want to look into it.

samatjain commented 12 years ago

I'll take a look at virtualenvwrapper… but, the point of the included Makefile is to get people up and running in the manner of modern Python Web apps without having to read too many extra docs.

emacsen commented 12 years ago

I agree we need to make it easier to install. I'll be working on that, and so it will be a one liner with pip. Since pip is required already (to handle the dependencies), this should be enough.

virtualenv isn't strictly necessary, it just keeps environments sane, like rvm for Ruby or local:lib for Perl.

I also think that some of this need would be reduced with a public instance for people to test on, which I'll do.