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numbas / editor

An editor for the Numbas e-learning system.
http://numbas.mathcentre.ac.uk
Apache License 2.0
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An update for the 'Installing a local instance for personal use' instructions needed #419

Closed JoshuaCapel closed 6 years ago

JoshuaCapel commented 6 years ago

The instruction for installing a local instance for personal use are now out of date. These are the instructions at: http://numbas.github.io/editor/index.html

All version of the instructions refer to copying and modifying a file named database.py.dist, but such a file no longer exists in the project.

After working out how to search the log I found that commit d51690e36aa32201881f5d7d721bd0f9d7acd1c6 has removed it and added a script first_setup.py.

The steps up to copying and modifying the file numbas_editor/numbas/settings.py.dist were all mostly successful. Running python first_setup.py then seem to complete the setup (but I did need to create some folders that didn't exist).

Related to the instruction, a minor issue that did stop me during the setup was that I didn't have the package libjpeg8-dev installed. But I am not sure if this will be a common issue.

To clarify, I was following the instructions at http://numbas.github.io/editor/mac-local.html as I assumed they would be very similar to what I needed for a linux distribution (Ubuntu 18.04 LTS).

christianp commented 6 years ago

Oops! When I got my new PC, I cloned the editor repository so I could edit the gh-pages branch separately, and didn't notice that when I was doing git push it was only going to my other local copy! Fixed now.

What led you to follow the Mac instructions instead of the Ubuntu ones? I've just changed the index page so that the OSes aren't separated by "for personal use"/"for use on a web server" - was that what decided it for you?

christianp commented 6 years ago

I'm closing this issue because I think I've fixed the immediate issue.

JoshuaCapel commented 6 years ago

Let me preface this by saying that I only have 15% of the skill set need to play around with Numbas, so feel free to ignore 85% of what I say if I don't see to understand what I am doing.

Originally I was following the Ubuntu instructions, but they seemed to be putting the files in directories outside my home directory and setting up a server to be shared over the web.

I only want a local version I can mess about/do developmental work on since I am almost certainly going to be using Numbas a lot in the coming year (and unlike other systems I must use, the backend does not need to be a closed-source mystery). The web-server set up was going to make it hard to edit the files without constantly becoming the root user.

I see the Mac and Windows instructions are labelled as 'recommended only for development', so I feel my choice was justified.

By the way, I am not sure this issue is closed. The instruction at http://numbas.github.io/editor/mac-local.html seem to still reference the non-existent database.py.dist file. I did refresh my browser, so I am sure I am not just looking at a cached version of the instructions.

christianp commented 6 years ago

You're right, I should have looked more closely. I've now put the personal/multi-user distinction back in, and added instructions to set up a personal instance on Ubuntu.