On Tue, Dec 10, 2013 at 4:57 PM, Bruce Whealton <brucewheal...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hello all, > So, I started looking at recommended reading on Django and a > couple books referred me to first go through "The Definitive Guide To > Django." I have to admit some concern about reading a book on Django that > is some 5 plus years old. I've come to think of this as the information age > and as such, anything over a certain number of years as being very > problematic. However, I did notice that the Bitnami Django stack does use > Python 2.5 - the version I just downloaded... not even 2.7.x but 2.5.
Python has many versions. The most recent version of 2.5 is old, but it is not decrepit (just yet). I would use 2.7 though. > Another confusing thing is that the Bitnami Guide for what I > just downloaded is radically different from what actually gets downloaded > and setup. I cannot even find the application or a similar folder to the > app I created when I installed Django stack from Bitnami. Even looking at > the access_log was not very helpful. There are calls to /img/bitnami.png and > a GET request to StartProject, which was the project name I chose during > installation. > After trying to figure out this installation, I jumped back to > "The Definitive Guide to Django" and jumping into chapter 2, I found > success. So. I'll probably move forward with the instructions in that text > and hope that I'm not learning something outdated. Again, this text is > recommended as a prerequisite for other texts, as it were. > Any advice on this? Has anyone had great success with Bitnami's Django > stack? The bitnami stack is not django, it is a packaging of django. I would not use it, and instead simply install the components you require. The django manual contains a tutorial and extensive documentation, and is built from the source code to which it refers. Whatever version of django you install, referring to the django manual for that version will give you correct tutorials and documentation. > Here is another thing that has me a bit confused. Coming from > Drupal, Wordpress, etc, the thinking is that one should always get the > latest version, at least the latest minor version, e.g. if running Drupal > 7.24 comes out and you are running Drupal 7.23, you are strongly encouraged > to upgrade. However, some of my reading and course work on Django discusses > creating isolated environments that don't break when a new version is > released. What makes it such that if Django 1.65, or 1.7 comes out there is > not an easy upgrade to the next latest edition without breaking things? No, isolated environments are so that your app does not break because someone else's app on the same server was upgraded. You should always use a supported version of django, and use the most recent release of that version. You do not always have to use the most recent version - just as long as it is a supported version, the most recent release will have all security fixes in it. Eg, 1.6 is the most recent version, and 1.6.0 (just called 1.6) is the most recent release in that version, but you can quite happily continue to use 1.5 (release 1.5.5) or 1.4 (release 1.4.10). Each jump to a major version will come with changes that you will be required to make to your project, possibly even to 3rd party apps (or, if you can't manage this yourself, you will have to wait for the author of the app to update to include support for the new version). For that reason, you probably don't want to blithely update your sites, but do it as part of an upgrade process. Eg for the most recent release: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.6/releases/1.6/#backwards-incompatible-changes-in-1-6 It is slightly different to what I have described, Django has a deprecation policy, features not pending deprecation in X.Y will work in X.Y+1 and X.Y+2, features pending deprecation in X.Y will work in X.Y+1 but not X.Y+2. This means that what commonly happens is a release has a feature that is pending deprecation, you upgrade to the release without rewriting/fixing the deprecated section, and then update to the next version and find that your code is broken. > My intention is not to be critical, as I really like Python and > Django. Similar to learning Node.js and the specification of Dependencies, > I have not read or found discussed in an online course, why one might not > use the latest version of a dependency... or how one would be needing > earlier versions of a dependency or a component of a framework. > Thanks in advance for any advice, > Bruce The reason we version software is so that the API can be fixed at particular points. If you write your site for django 1.2, and then install django 1.6, it (probably) will not work. Cheers Tom -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Django users" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to django-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to django-users@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/django-users. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/django-users/CAFHbX1JPUh9rLG%2BDgwVVaRxywErf%2BXP8aSgzp6hV-1%3Dm%2BYod-A%40mail.gmail.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
